Building Better Discussions Through Improved Design

Introduction: As an educational tool, an online discussion can be used for many different things to guide the content and process of education:  an activity, instruction, sharing platform, social forum, and/or assessment (Harman & Koohang, 2005) . The effectiveness of learning, engaging, teaching, and evaluating learners utilizing the discussion board varies greatly based on the design format (Thomas, 2013).  Although the format, guidance, and evaluation of discussion boards are not often considered past the use of the discussion board as a teaching platform, thoughtful consideration about the discussion board and how it relates to objectives in a course or curriculum is an important link.

Specific Aim: In this session, we aim to explore different ways to utilize the discussion board to optimize the role it plays in a course based on sample learning objectives.

Learning using Discussion Boards: When course objectives include reflection, analysis, and resolution of topics such as clinical issues, discussion boards are just as effective as classroom learning (Thomas, 2013), but optimizing the use of discussion boards to enhance learning objectives (and vice versa) needs to be considered.  Discussion boards promote more student-centered learning that makes this venue more useful for reflecting, collaborating, and learning. The more structured the discussion boards are, the more logical reasoning and critical thinking skills can be developed, more focus on written communication skills, mastery of specific (modularized) content. The more unstructured a discussion board is, the greater encourage diverse perspectives and emphasize building student-to-student rapport in a learning community. Tracking student engagement was much easier online (Buckley, 2011; Sautter, 2007). Students reported feeling engaged, motivated, knowledgeable, and appreciative of peers and the collaboration (Evans, 2013).Discussion board communication patterns are much more elaborate interaction than with phone calls or verbal communication, lending themselves looking at novelty, popularity and trending of information (Gómez, Kappen, Litvak, & Kaltenbrunner, 2013). This impacts the process because there are a number of different ways that discussion boards can be assessed, well beyond just counting the number of responses.  

Educating using Discussion Boards: Backwards design encourages instructors to have a purpose in how they teach and assess learners grounded in expected outcomes from the learning. Backwards design focuses on using learning objectives to guide activities, instruction, and assessment (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), where attention is put on learning rather than teaching. The discussion board is used to enhance individual learning and collaboration through interactive communication, reflection, and enhanced critical thinking skills by moving content past the didactic content into more effective and reflective content (Johnson, 2006; Wilson & Fairchild, 2011) and improved student achievement outcomes for cognition and personality (Johnson, 2006). There are so many different ways that discussion boards are used, it is difficult when assessing literature and research of these forums because it is challenging to compare (Thomas, 2013).

Discussion Board Advantages and Feedback: There are many other positive aspects of discussion boards as well. They are typically used asynchronously by participants so that messages and responses can be thought about and responded at a later time, can be posted from anywhere and at any time and the threads are trackable over time, allowing users to follow many separate conversations but also allows documentation of the conversation and something to reread as needed. Discussion boards can be private (open only to a group of students), or public (open to everyone on the course). The boards can also forward messages to email so that the learners are aware of a new post or response to keep them engaged. Discussion boards can help more students participate, give students more time to have more thought out responses, can add to references and encourage students sharing information and ideas from outside the classroom, and can encourage collaboration on the student’s own time  (Tiene, 2007; Buckley, 2011; Evans, 2013; Gregory & Bannister-Tyrrell, 2017; Thomas, 2013; Wilson & Fairchild, 2011) and encourage more effective student-student rapport vs. live courses which encourage more student-instructor rapport (Thomas, 2013).

There are also a number of activities that can be done using a discussion board such as individual and group discussions, group work, summary of content previously read, peer response/editing, brainstorming, and mentoring (Wilson & Fairchild, 2011). Student achievement is facilitated by asynchronous online discussion reflecting high level cognitive processing and contribute to learning and motivation (Johnson, 2006).  It is a recommended method of assessing learning through discussion boards but it is not usual to measure the general content of a face to face discussion for evidence of learning either. One key difference to contain the number of discussion board posts is to use smaller groups (three to five participants) to have positive results. Smaller group size contrasts with e-learning in general education that suggests 20-25 is optimum to maximize student cognitive development (Thomas, 2013).

Discussion based learning can increase awareness of ambiguity, appreciate diversity, improve communications skills, and encourage active listening. Learning outcomes improve when instructors structure online communication to facilitate growth of a learning community (Rollag, 2019).

Assessment of Discussion Boards: Discussion board assessment is typically looked at in terms of participation (number of postings, word counts, quantities), quality (peer or faculty graded based on content), or conclusions/synthesis (go beyond detailing information to applying it into context) (Rollag, 2010). Kilpatrick’s model of summative evaluation describes four levels of assessment that could additionally be utilized to assess discussion boards in health professional education. This ranges from learner satisfaction (Level I) where the learner is happy with the learning, learning outcomes (Level II) where the learner feels that they have learned something, performance change in clinical practice (Level III) where the learner has made changes in their own practice, or evaluation of patient/health outcomes (Level IV) where learners have made an impact in patient care that shows in patient outcomes.  Interesting no studies were found that looked at Level IV assessment strategies as a result in discussion boards, and over 80% were at the Level I level and over 50% at the level II but very few at level III and none at level IV. It has been suggested that the use of case-based learning is more helpful with this content than just regurgitating the didactic portion from a live course to an online one. Content of posts matter, not just the quantity or length of posting. Instructors influence the depth of thinking in online discussion boards by explicitly making expectations as such. This can be done by evaluating the self-assessment, collaboration and reflection in posts. Posts that provide solutions to problems, interpret or challenge posts, integrate new values, or synthesizing different information presented are all more advanced cognitive levels to achieve in discussion boards. Instructors should provide feedback along with these expectations and prompts should require responders to put a post that challenges, claims, synthesizes, and correlates information. Students should also be prompted to return to a board not just post and be done (Williams, 2015).

Conclusion: We propose to dive deeper into using discussion boards to augment learning. Discussion boards can also be used to help share references. After all, learners can utilize, search and evaluate them. Learners can combine information and deconstruct information using discussion boards, they can also share and exchange information across the venue and it can be interoperable across multiple platforms (Harman & Koohang, 2005). Feedback from learners on discussion boards has been very positive. Physicians are satisfied with online learning (Curran & Fleet, 2005).  Fifty seven percent of learners report discussion boards have significant impact on learning, 79% say significant or highly significant impact on learning only 9% feel that they have not impact on their learning (Gregory & Bannister-Tyrrell, 2017).