This is a guest post, written by our Digital Learning Assistant, Lucie Hopkins, in which she interviews her colleague and fellow DLA, Tram Pham.
Welcome to the fourth week of Wander Wednesday! Only a few days left until the semester begins…If you haven’t yet, take a look at last week’s post featuring Lucie Hopkins on Pressbooks to catch up. This week, we are lucky to have DLA Tram Pham share her thoughts and expertise on using Canvas Discussion Boards in your online course.
Tram Pham is a rising senior, majoring in Finance and Business Administration. As a DLA, Tram has been supporting faculty and peers with building, customizing, and organizing their websites through WordPress, as well as being a resource in terms of students’ perspectives and technical issues (Canvas, Hypothes.is, G-Suite, etc.) for faculty throughout the Camp Design Online 2020.
Without further ado, let’s hear from Tram!
“This week, Wander Wednesday has come back with a very familiar topic: Discussion Boards. Compared to other digital platforms, the Discussion Board is a more familiar platform that is located in every Canvas course, which I believe we all have come across several times while building our courses. The Discussion Board allows us to create topics in order for the whole class to respond with their perspectives and answers. Moreover, peers can reply to each other, such as if they agree with an idea or want to follow up with it. In this past Spring semester, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to experience different uses of the Discussion Board, and I cannot wait to share it to all of you!
The overview of the Discussion Board:
To start with, before going online in Spring, I did not know how useful the Discussion Board could be as a learning tool; however, after we went online in the Spring semester and as my classes started using the Discussion Boards more often, I realized that there are plenty of advantages when it comes to involving the Discussion Board in teaching and learning. Besides allowing you to create topics and have students reply to them, the Discussion Board encourages learning among peers. In one of my Spring 2020 classes, instead of posting the answers along with the practice tests, my professor created a discussion board for us to help each other with answering questions. By doing so, we were motivated to work on the problems ourselves rather than taking the solutions for granted. Furthermore, as there are many ways to get to the final result, we were able to learn different methods from peers through discussing our answers among each other.
Another benefit of the Discussion Board that I want to highlight (and also my favorite part of the Discussion Board!) is that it assists faculty members in helping students with the class materials. Through this Summer cohort training, I am more mindful of both faculty and students’ time. Everyone’s schedule is different. That is why it is difficult to find a best office hour time for all students and faculty to gather. And this is when the Discussion Board comes into play. As I have mentioned above, having students support each other is one way to lift the burden off the professor’s shoulders. Faculty can create a discussion board for each week’s materials and let students post their questions there. Throughout the week, everyone can check the discussion board and help their peers with the questions. If there are questions that are unanswered, faculty can pick out the pattern and respond to them at the beginning of the class or record a video answering the questions (“asynchronous office hours”). Additionally, learning assistants of the class may be able to go through the questions and help answer those in their workshops. By doing this, there is less stress for faculty and students’ questions can be answered in a timely manner.
Nevertheless, I recognize that unlike in person or synchronous online discussion, the Discussion Board can be a bit “dry” and less exciting. It may be hard for students to feel motivated or energized whenever they have to work with Discussion Boards. For that reason, although the Discussion Board is helpful, I believe it will reach its “most beneficial stage” if it is used with other digital platforms. The Discussion Board can be a continuation of the discussion on Zoom or JamBoard. It can also be a “backup” office hour space for faculty in case a lot of questions need to be answered. By interchanging among different platforms, faculty can create flexibility and excitement for students in their learning journey.
Phew! I never thought I would have so many thoughts on the Discussion Board until now! If you ever want to find another platform to accompany the ones you are using, please try Discussion Boards out! I think you will like it! I understand the current situation is really frustrating and stressing you out, but please remember that we are here to support you through this uncertain time. We are all in this together! I truly appreciate all the effort and thoughtfulness that you have put into your teaching. If you have any questions or concerns (or just want to have a conversation), feel free to contact me at tnpham@muhlenberg.edu. Thanks for reading and you are all amazing!”