What strategies will help teachers maximize the effectiveness of online participation tools?
Unit Objectives: Participants will identify strategies that help make online participation tools more effective. Participants will adopt effective strategies for online participation tools by creating a rubric for student online participation.
Activity # 1: MINI-LECTURE
What are the drawbacks to online participation tools?
Online participation tools have a few drawbacks that teachers will want to mitigate. Some problems with asynchronous online tools can be:
- Students may post summaries of other students' work instead of thoughtful, unique responses.
- Miscommunication between students can result in tension and resentment. Communicating clearly online can be more difficult for students than talking face to face.
- Students, outside of of the classroom, may forget the rules of the classroom and post inappropriate remarks or use obscene language.
- Students unused to participating at home may feel that work outside of school hours in unimportant; hence, they may not participate online.
- Some students may not have access to computers at home.
- Some students may be concerned that their privacy is not protected in an online forum.
What are some strategies that teachers can use to mitigate these problems?
- Teachers can provide students with a clear set of expectations regarding online participation by providing students with a set of expectations outlined in a syllabus or rubric.
- Teachers can require students to generate questions for online discussion. This technique helps avoid a discussion in which students students focus on answering the teacher's questions rather than developing their own responses and ideas.
- Teachers can grade online discussion. To many students, a grade indicates to them that a class activity is important.
- Teachers can choose online tools that are free to students.
- Teachers can choose online tools that guarantee student safety and privacy.
Activity # 2: REFLECT
List 2 strategies that would make using online participation tools more effective. Based on your experiences, what ideas do you have to make online tools more effective? Share your ideas in the space at http://www.collaborizeclassroom.com/
Activity #3: READ
Review some rubrics assessing online participation here http://askelearning.csuohio.edu/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=231.
Activity # 4: CREATE
Utilizing some ideas from the website, create a holistic rubric for a classroom discussion for your class. In your rubric, describe what students can do to show active participation using an online tool. Post your rubric in the space at www.collaborizeclassroom.com. Read and respond to your classmates' rubrics.
SUMMARY: Online participation tools can lead to miscommunication and poor participation by students if teachers don't make their expectations for language and active discussion clear to students in an explicit way.