Documentation:Distance and Blended Learning Course Support/Managing Discussion Posts

Managing Discussion Posts

In most courses, the Discussion Board is where most of the interaction takes place and where a transformation in your knowledge occurs. How lively, informative and enjoyable it is depends on the level of engagement of the participants. Each Discussion Board will develop its own dynamic, but there are a couple of things you can do to help ensure its success.

Most importantly, a Discussion Board requires conversation and not just the posting of complete answers, so it is important that everyone uses the board to investigate ideas and explore concepts. A good discussion thread should naturally cycle through the following 4 phases:

1. Get information, post what you know, perhaps in response to an activity
2. Make discoveries, connect to the literature, investigate your peers' perspectives
3. Hypothesize, predict, formulate
4. Test your hypothesis, apply your knowledge, synthesize your understanding

When you post a message, please provide a clear subject header. This is very important as it will give you an easier means to refer back to a discussion and find what you are looking for. Avoid using subjects such as "Question?????" or "My thoughts" as they don't give the reader any indication of the content of the message. Instead, divide your subject header into two parts – 1) the main idea and 2) the salient point. For example: "Implementing policy change | Community outreach". By the end of the course there will be hundreds of messages in the Discussion Board, so using clear subject headers will make everyone's lives much easier and will allow you to easily compile the content for future reference.