Documentation:Supporting Critical Thinking Online/Online Discussion
Online Discussion
Asking Good Questions
Online discussion is based on good questions, whether these are proposed by students, by the instructor or (in some cases) both. "Deep questions drive our thought underneath the surface of things, force us to deal with complexity." Here are some examples of question types and the kind of thought they may stimulate: from: The Role of Questions in Teaching, Thinking and Learning
- questions of purpose: help us define tasks.
- questions of information: forces us to look at source and quality of our information.
- questions of interpretation: ask us to examine how we are organizing or assigning meaning to information.
- questions of assumption: encourage us to examine what we might be taking for granted.
- questions of implication force us to look at where our thinking is bound to end up.
- questions of point of view ask us to examine our own and others perpectives and what is behind those points of view.
In his article, The State of Critical Thinking Today (2004), Dr Richard Paul (Critical Thinking Foundation) suggests that learners can be encouraged to develop a practice of critical thinking about the questions they are presented with. He offers these suggestions:
- What is my purpose?
- What question am I trying to answer?
- What data or information do I need?
- What conclusions or inferences can I make (based on this information)?
- If I come to these conclusions, what will the implications and consequences be?
- What is the key concept (theory, principle, axiom) I am working with?
- What assumptions am I making?
- What is my point of view?
For more about designing good questions, see the Examples in Practice section.
Facilitating the Discussion
Effective facilitation is about online leadership. As Xin and Feenberg suggest,"the two-sidedness of moderating—social and cognitive—is the key to online pedagogy."(p.19) They offer a summary of moderating functions:
- Contextualizing Functions: opens discussions, sets the tone, selects themes or questions for discussion (or sets up a process for students to do this); refers to readings, resources or links to extend thinking.
- Monitoring Functions:recognizes contributions, prompts contribution by posing new questions to the group; assesses contributions.
- Meta Functions: addresses issues towards solving problems related to lack of clarity, information overload, etc.; maintains conditions required for good communication; weaves common threads between participant comments, offering prompts and summary when important; delegates others to role of weaver, summarizer.
Discussion resources for faculty:
- Creating the Online Learning Environment: Engaging Learners
Discussion resources for learners: