Discussion Board Etiquette
Like e-mail, using the Discussion Board has preferred methods for communicating. Here are some problems that may occur with online discussions and remedies, excerpted from "What's Wrong with On-line Discussions and How to Fix It" by W.R. Klemm, D.V.M. Ph.d. (used with permission)
Problem Remedies
1. Participants don't realize the purpose. If a discussion does not have obvious goals and requirements, participants tend to think of it as a virtual lounge. Depending on their need for socialization, they may or may not participate extensively. If they do participate, they may spend too much time in trivial chit chat, rather than intense intellectual dialog.
a. State the purpose and objectives explicitly
b. Use content-rich topics
c. Require group deliverables (plans, projects, reports, case studies, etc.)
2. Purpose is unclear and expectations are vague. If a discussion is just a work space for miscellaneous comments, people may not supply much relevant input. Indeed they may not know what relevant input is, because the group leader provided insufficient guidance.
a. Explain the purpose and goals
b. Give feedback to serve as model
c. Make certain everybody knows that important people are monitoring and evaluating participation
3. Lurking. Participants just read, but do not contribute. Some people are shy. Some are insecure. Some are not as well informed as others. But on-line discussion groups can be a great equalizer and can allow the talents and knowledge of everyone to be tapped in ways that never occur in face-to-face meetings.
a. Require input
b. Publicly discourage lurking
c. Reward input
d. Minimize negative feedback
e. Build community
f. Build teams
4. A few people dominate all the discussion. The corollary of lurking is that a discussion becomes dominated by a few people who do all the talking. People get tired of their constant chatter. These people also tend to get carried away with idle comment.
a. Fix the lurking problem
b. Make certain you have a group leader with authority
c. Give gentle corrective feedback by private mail
d. Post publicly the need to maintain focus, stay on task, and keep message volume down
5. Comments are trivial. Comments are weak, irrelevant, or off task
a. Discourage it and explain why
b. Give examples of trivial input
c. Have specific goals and tasks
d. Remind people to stay on task
e. Model desired behavior and praise others who do
6. Comments are opinion driven. Messages are often nothing more than each person's opinion on a topic. Asking students, for example, to express their opinions, which is all that many teachers do, does little to develop students' knowledge base, not to mention their creative, integrative, and analytical abilities.
a. Insist that opinions be defended
b. Create tasks that get beyond opinion
7. Participants don't know what good input is. Many people have no experience with on-line discussions and little way to know what constitutes useful exchange of information.
a. Show by example what good input is
b. Praise the good input of others
8. Nobody reads what is posted. I remember a presentation at an educational technology meeting where the speaker, a professor, proudly displayed a listing of all the e-mail messages his students had posted. Notably, the messages were all annotated with New, meaning that he had not read any of them. It is a good bet that the students had not read them either.
a. Create groups
b. Use shared workspace, where many messages can be open in one place
c. Assign group editor to write summaries
9. There is no tangible result. An unfocussed discussion without specific goals and tasks will almost inevitably prove unproductive.
a. Use a constructivist approach that requires participants to generate a product or some kind of deliverable
References:
Klemm, W.R. (2000). What's Wrong With On-line Discussions - And How to Fix It [Electronic Version]. Proceedings of WebNet 2000 World Conference on the WWW and Internet, 335-340.
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