Discussion Forums Help Students Take Charge of Their Learning
Ms Zoe Ng | Lecturer
The traditional approach to education has been to build up students’ foundational skills by transferring knowledge from teacher to student. But increasingly, it is recognised that learning can be richer and deeper if students play a more active role. Ms Zoe Ng, Lecturer in the School of Nursing, has taken on the challenge of creating such a model for nursing education by working within the existing learning management system.
“My aim was to enhance and promote students’ interaction with each other and with the content by encouraging them to take more responsibility for their learning,” she said.
The result is a programme that makes creative use of discussion forums to drive interaction and feedback and provide students with opportunities for taking charge of their learning.
The forums were integrated into group assignments in which students worked in groups of four to develop an education booklet and received and gave feedback to each other throughout the process.
The students were first engaged in self-directed learning by choosing their topic from a list of categories, drafting a preliminary design and posting that for peer feedback. Each student had to provide a mandatory minimum of two feedback postings and they could also read other students’ feedback in all groups. “Obviously, students are prone to compare themselves against those who are working on the same topic as themselves,” Ms Ng noted.
The students also had to reply to a set number of comments, which forced them to think more deeply about their work. “This sometimes triggered the process of searching for answers by themselves. Therefore, the learning went far beyond their group work to more interaction among groups and individuals,” she said.
In finalising their education booklets, the students had to take into account the suggestions of other students before posting their final version on the discussion forum and submitting a hard copy.
Finally, they had to grade the contributions of their peers. Teachers also tracked participation.
“It is difficult to make students become masters of their own learning in a course. I believe with the effort of the whole teaching team to employ different learning strategies, the creation of a powerful learning environment is just around the corner,” she said.
Ms Ng offered some suggestions for other teachers on incorporating discussion forums into their courses:
- Make the learning teams small, because this will make it easier to control member engagement.
- No optional participation!
- Provide incentives (some portion of marks) for participation.
- Provide clear instructions.
- Make the assignment interesting and allow some choice and flexibility.
- Consider the students’ workload in designing the course and setting deadlines.
- Provide an opportunity for students to address peer feedback and refine their deliverable.
- Allow for peer grading.
- Finally, minimise interruptions from the teacher.
“The student-student and student-content interactions in the discussion forums are not meant to abrogate teacher responsibility in providing feedback, but it is better if teachers adopt a ‘guide on the side’ approach. This can maximise student learning in a number of ways, such as promoting self-directed learning, collaborative and problemsolving skills,” she said.
References
- De Corte, E (1990). Towards powerful learning environments for the acquisition of problem-solving skills. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 5 (1), 5-19.
- Zimmerman, BJ (1989). Models of self-regulated learning and academic achievement. In Zimmermm, B. J. & Schunk, D. H. (Eds.), Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 1-25). New York: Springer-Verlag.