It's interesting to read the perspectives of the other faculty in the Online Teaching course. I recognize, of course, that I'm several standard deviations away from the mean on lots of perspectives regarding teaching and learning. In most departmental contexts, I have to be careful about how I present my perspective (something I'm not always good at -- the "Brewer Method of Diplomacy" and all). So it's always a treat when I see other faculty coming at an issue from the same perspective that I have. Anyway, here is the posting I wrote
Tips to Enhance Online Interaction offers a variety of suggestions for improving online discussions. I will present and react to two of them: Monitoring and Shaping the discussion. The author argues for the importance of Monitoring the forum to facilitate the social interactions: encouraging more when discussion starts to lag, curbing undesirable posting, and keeping the discussion on task. The author describes Shaping the discussion primarily as an extension of keeping the discussion on task: posing initial questions that will elicit thoughtful commentary, keeping the discussion on target, and tying it up at the end.
One question I'll pose to this group: If you should monitor the online discussion forum, should you also monitor the online chat room, either by closing it when you're not there or logging all of the comments that are made and periodically reading them? Should you also monitor all face-to-face interactions between students, say, by placing video cameras and recording all of their interactions? Is there a difference between one's responsibility to monitor in "virtual" worlds and the real world? (I have some ideas about this, but I'd like to see what y'all think first. :-)
One issue the article doesn't address, which I am particularly concerned with: How to embed discussion in a meaningful task such that the motivation for the discussion derives from the value of insights, questions, and decisions that crystalize within the discussion that can contribute toward accomplishing the goals of the task, rather than abstract discussion for discussion's sake (or, even worse, for "participation credit")?
It is this last point that was echoed by another writer. This is the key issue: how do you create tasks that are real enough that the discussion happens because it advances the actual goals of the participants? What would education be like if it was all like that?
Boingboing had a link to Everything in Moderation which has some really interesting and apropos stuff. I was particularly interested to read a group is its own worst enemy. The key point, which I hadn't thought of before is the idea that "The user of social software is the group, not the individual." Doh! That's something I'll need to think about for a while before I can begin to understand how many things that changes about what I've been thinking. I think I'll add this to the list of things I'll have my class read.