To increase the effectiveness of online discussions as a learning opportunity
I have observed that many of my online students are using AI generated content for their online discussion or they are not seeming to make much of an effort. As a result, the discussion was just a box to check rather than an important learning opportunity.
There's no place on this form to describe the practice, so I'm putting that here:
When I was discussing this with Kelly Loucy, she said she had started separating the Post from the students' reactions. Now, my students still follow the directions to enter their Post in the discussion board, but then they complete a Report (that only I read) about the discussion where they copy their post and then answer questions about the posts they read:
- evaluate the effectiveness of your post compared to your classmates'
- describe the most useful post from a classmate and explain why you selected it -- include the classmate's name
- describe least useful post from a classmate and explain why you selected it -- include the classmate's name
- describe the most interesting or thought-provoking post from a classmate -and explain why you selected it -- include the classmate's name
- Exceed Expectations -- analyze how your understanding of this week's topic changed after reading your classmates' posts
This report will be in an assignment with Turnitin activated, so students are less likely to use AI, and the students are able to interact with their classmates' posts in a more private context.
After implementing this change, I looked through the previous semesters' discussion work to compare it to the semester with the changed assignment.
I ignored the first discussion because I imagined that students would be getting used to the approach. When I compared subsequent discussions, I found that the overall grades had increased significantly.
There seemed to be two specific reasons for this increase:
- fewer students were submitting AI generated or "nonsense" answers, answers that basically just repeated the information from the prompt without adding anything to the discussion
- more students were completing all of the assignment -- when I required x number of replies, I found that many students would do fewer than required or none at all, but with the Report format, I saw that most students were completing the entire assignment.
Because I found many of my online students weren't participating meaningfully in online discussions, I changed my approach and asked them to Post in the discussion board and then use a separate Report, that only I read, to discuss their classmates' posts. I found that students were more focused on the questions and more willing to participate fully; these two improvements resulted in a significant improvement in their grades.