Engaging students in asynchronous online discussions
Picture a successful discussion in an in-person class. What do you see? Often we imagine an instructor standing at the front of the room or walking around the class, guiding students through a series of questions or prompts, asking follow-up questions, and providing feedback on their responses. Students are eager to chime in and share their thinking, and the instructor can capitalize on their enthusiasm and redirect their thinking in productive ways.
When we teach online courses, we want to have these kinds of lively interactions, but we may worry that it just can’t be done when students aren’t together in a classroom at the same time. Asynchronous discussions do unfold differently than in-person ones, but there are tried-and-true strategies that can help us!
This article provides an overview of key strategies for ensuring meaningful interactions in online discussions and a full example to demonstrate how these strategies can be put into action.
Help students understand what they should learn from online discussions.
Before we ask students to engage in online discussions, we need to articulate for ourselves how this work will support their learning—and then we need to articulate that purpose to them! When students don’t understand why they are doing the work we ask of them or how they will benefit from doing that work, they will be tempted to do the bare minimum to get credit. If we want them to devote energy and attention to discussions, we need to explain how the work they do in that space will benefit them. This includes explaining how the work they will do in discussions is connected to other work in the course, to the work of other college courses, and to the work they will do after they leave college. Remind them, also, that the discussions you have designed involve problems and questions that are challenging, meaningful, and exciting!
When students realize that we aren’t just asking them to “jump through hoops” by participating in discussions, they can see meaning in their work. This not only helps them engage more fully in the discussions themselves, but it also helps them feel more connected to the course as a whole.
Provide prompts that focus students’ thinking.
Online instructors often express frustration when class discussions quickly devolve into “I agree” or “Good post.” This happens most frequently when we use prompts that are loosely structured (e.g., “What did you feel was the most interesting part of the reading?”) or that ask students to explain course concepts to each other (e.g., “Describe Durkheim’s notion of anomie in your own words and give an example from your own experience”).
In an in-person class, the instructor could use these prompts to move toward more meaningful interaction by asking clarifying questions, comparing students’ responses, or making connections across ideas. Asynchronous online discussions are different because we aren’t there to orchestrate the conversation, and it unfolds over a much longer period of time. Using broad, loosely-structured prompts in that setting typically leads to superficial discussions that flag quickly and don’t have much genuine interaction.
Open-ended questions can be unproductively difficult for students, too, because they must generate ideas; students spend a great deal of mental energy coming up with an answer, rather than coming up with reasoning for that answer. A more focused, structured discussion or activity prompt gives students a limited number of options to choose from, allows us to determine where the discussion will begin, and productively focuses discussion on the factors and issues we want students to work with. These kinds of prompts will also ensure that discussions will surface disagreement and different ways of thinking.
Instead of asking students to show us what they know about the course content, we need to have them use the course content to take a position, make a decision, solve a problem, analyze a situation, etc. Short cases, scenarios describing real-world situations, or conceptual problems can work very well here because you can ask students to use what they are learning in the course. These realistic challenges ensure meaningful interaction between students because they require multiple perspectives to be fully analyzed. Most importantly, we need to ask students to explain their thinking. When we design prompts in this way, we are giving students a genuine reason to see what other students have to say and respond.
Provide structure to guide students’ thinking and interactions.
Writing a good prompt is an essential first step, but remember that we aren’t there with students when they are doing the work of discussion like we would be in an in-person class! This means that we need to make sure we are providing structure to guide their interactions so that they can make the most of a focused prompt and learn from each other. There are several ways that we can create these productive conditions for asynchronous discussions.
Make sure students commit to their own thinking first.
Students need to articulate their own thinking before they see what others have to say. If they can review others’ posts before they have formulated their own response, students may not take the time to fully engage their own thinking. If a particularly confident or articulate student routinely posts first in a discussion, disagreements are not likely to emerge because their peers may not feel comfortable expressing a different perspective. This will shut down a discussion before it even begins! To ensure that students are expressing their own ideas to start the discussion, select the “Learners must start a thread before they can view or reply to other threads” option in Brightspace.
Have students discuss in small groups.
Even in small online classes, discussions can quickly become overwhelmingly if all students are trying to participate in the same space. Instead of asking all students to interact with each other, put students into smaller groups of 4-7 students for their discussions. This can help create a more productive setting and reduce any feelings of intimidation students may feel about sharing their thinking. In addition, having students work in smaller groups, especially when we use the same groups throughout the semester, can help them develop relationships with each other that will help them feel more connected to the course and less isolated in their work.
Make your expectations clear.
Students may not be used to participating in asynchronous discussions, which means they may not understand how they should approach their work. As part of the instructions for each discussion, make sure you describe the structure and length of the response you want as well as how you want students to use course materials in their responses. Be clear, also, about when students should make their initial posts and when they will be required to respond to each other. This kind of detail will help ensure that students do the kind of work you expect.
Help students respond to each other.
Students’ initial posts are just the first step: the actual discussion happens when they respond to each other! While many students are well-versed in how to jump into an in-person discussion, they may not have good strategies for responding to each other in an asynchronous setting. This means you need to help them focus their feedback to each other in ways that require them to disagree, to draw on others’ ideas, or to evaluate different ways of thinking. As with their initial posts, all their responses should require students to refer to and use key concepts and principles from the course content.
Pace student work.
Unlike an in-person classroom, you can’t ask students to complete their work in a discussion in one sitting. Have students post responses to a discussion prompt one day and then come back to that prompt and respond to classmates’ posts a day or two later. After students have engaged in some interaction in the discussion, they may sum up their ideas and how they’ve developed.
Underscore the value of discussions by naming them thoughtfully.
Consider giving the discussion board work required in your course a name that communicates that you want students to interact in meaningful, expert ways with each other and with exciting, realistic problems. Using the name “discussion board” to signify the work that you want students to do can lead students to believe that discussion is simply a way to engage with a technology associated with asynchronous courses rather than a deliberate and crucial way for students to engage with their learning and your discipline. For example, in a cybersecurity course, rather than telling students they will “post to the discussion board” each week, you can tell them that they will be “working in small groups as cybersecurity experts to tackle a weekly cybersecurity attack challenge.”
Use your presence in discussions strategically.
Sometimes online instructors worry about discussions because they are concerned that they won’t have time to respond to all students’ posts. The reality is you won’t have time to respond to each individual post—and the good news is that you don’t need to! Online discussions are a space for students to work together. In fact, when instructors become too involved in discussions, students will actually participate less. A more effective (and more efficient!) way to engage with students is to read their discussions as they unfold, diagnose students’ thinking, and respond to the big trends that emerged. After a discussion has concluded, provide students with three key takeaways from the discussion they just had in a written announcement or a short video. Use this response to point out the disagreements and different ways of thinking that emerged, highlight a couple of insightful posts or replies, and clarify points where there were patterns of confusion.
Sometimes instructors also wonder about how best to grade or provide credit for discussions. It is helpful to provide a simple point system that communicates to students the value of discussions for their learning but also as a place to experiment and take risks. If the stakes are too high, students will work for right answers and not explore their thinking or the thinking of their peers (which is the whole point of discussions). If the prompts you’ve created have two or three parts, simply look for those parts and assign points if the components are there. When your prompt is specific enough, it will require the complexity of thinking that you want students to aim for.
Example of discussion instructions from a cybersecurity course
Purpose
In this discussion, you will work with your group to evaluate possible responses to a specific kind of cybersecurity attack. This is exactly the kind of thinking you will need to do in your final project for this course, where you will develop part of a cybersecurity plan for a small government agency. Beyond that, being able to articulate your thinking, listen to other perspectives, and make good decisions about next steps for solving problems is an essential skill not only in cybersecurity courses, but also in your professional work in this field.
Your task
The case study below describes a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack on a county government office as well as three potential responses to this attack, labeled A, B, and C. Read the case study carefully and decide which of these three responses would be best given the circumstances described. Justify and explain your response using information from the course readings.
Your steps to success
Prepare and write your post.
Before you post to this discussion, you need to complete the assigned reading. After you have read carefully, you are ready to post. In a two-paragraph post, present your analysis of the case study below and explain which response you believe would be most effective and which ideas from the assigned reading informed your choice. Be sure to refer to details from the case study and from the assigned reading and articulate the relevant concepts in your own words.Respond to your group members.
Read all your group members’ posts and consider how their thinking about the case compared with your own. Write two responses using the guidelines below.
Identify one post where the writer made a different choice then you did. After reading their explanation, do you still believe that your choice is the better one? If so, use ideas from the course readings to defend your position. If not, explain how their explanation changed your thinking.
Identify one post where the writer’s thinking helps you understand an idea from the course readings in a different way. This could be a post in which the writer made the same choice that you did or one in which they made a different choice. Be sure that you are explicit about the ways in which this post uses course principles in a different way than you originally understood them.
Submission details
Make your initial post by Wednesday, October 9, at 5:00pm and respond to your group’s posts by Monday, October 14.
Resources
Barkley, E. F. and Major, C. H. (2022). Engaged teaching: A handbook for college faculty. SocialGood.
Darby, F. and Lang, J. M. (2019). Small teaching online: Applying learning science in online classes. Jossey-Bass.
Herman, J. H. and Nilson, L. B. (2018). Creating engaging discussions: Strategies for ‘avoiding crickets’ in any size classroom and online. Stylus.