Discussions are sometimes called the engine of an online course. Discussions provide an opportunity for students to engage with the course content, with each other, and with you—the professor—simultaneously, which means they have a lot of potential for meaningful learning and high retention.

There is no guarantee that students will really apply themselves by just creating a discussion. What you get out of a discussion assignment depends on what you put into it. Here are some tips for writing your discussion prompt, selecting your settings, and participating in the discussion.

Identify why this assignment is a discussion

Step one is to identify your goals for this assignment and your reasons for making it a discussion assignment. Do you want students to see the diverse perspectives of their classmates on the content? Do you want students to debate contrasting viewpoints? Do you want students to give feedback to each other as they apply the course content? How exactly do you want them to engage with each other?

There are practical considerations as well. Do you want to spark an ongoing discussion that students carry on without you, or do you want only a set an exact number of posts and replies from each student? Be realistic about how much you can read and respond to.

Be explicit and specific about your expectations

• Give length guidelines. I know. You want students to write as much as they need to in order to answer the question. Keep in mind that online discussion isn’t a modality all students are overly familiar with. Students won’t know how thorough they need to be.
• List all the required elements of a good initial post. What points should each new thread address?

Provide guidelines for replies as well

• Give length guidelines for replies as well, and let students know specifically what they should be commenting on and how they can make a substantive comment that goes beyond “I agree” or “I disagree.”
• Let students know what your expectations are regarding extra posts beyond the required replies. Are students encouraged to engage in further discussion? If they do, will the extra replies figure into their grade for the discussion or earn them participation points? Keep in mind what you have time to read as you make these decisions. And don’t assume that if students are really interested in a topic that they’ll keep discussing it without a little encouragement from you. Your students may be new to this modality and may not know the etiquette.

Avoid repetitive posts

A common complaint among online students is that they often run out of original things to contribute once half the class has posted already. Here are some strategies for avoiding that situation.

• Avoid discussions with a more-or-less “right” answer. If you think students will mostly be posting the same response, it might not be well suited as a discussion. Even if you’re asking students to provide their own opinions or interpretations, think about how controversial the subject matter really is. If you think students will mostly have the same reaction, it’s probably not applicable for a class-wide discussion.
• Ask students to incorporate personal experiences. Students will always feel like they’re able to make a substantial contribution to the discussion if they can draw on their own life experiences.
• Ask students to apply the concept being studied to a specific example. If it’s an advertising class, have students go out and find an advertisement that uses a particular technique and comment on it. Each student can bring something new to the table by finding their own case or example from the outside world.
• When all else fails, create group-restricted discussions. It may be difficult for a student to make an original contribution when twenty classmates have already posted, but if he’s only in a group of five, it will be easier.

Lock discussions to prevent them from going on and on

If you encourage students to post beyond the standard one original post with two replies, it’s often a good idea to lock discussions after the module is over. You want students to stay together and focus on the current module’s topic rather than looking back to the last one.

Use post-first discussions where appropriate

The latest D2L update allows you to require students to post to a discussion board first before being able to see what their classmates have already posted. There are a couple reasons you might want to use this:

• Avoid copying. Often discussions aren’t the correct assessment type if your prompt has a “correct” answer, but if it does, this will prevent students from copying the first person to post.
• Avoid bias and groupthink. Human nature is to defer to popular opinion, and allowing students to see what others have posted before making their contribution to the discussion board can make for skewed responses.

Intervene judiciously when participating in a discussion

You don’t have to respond to every single post from every single student, and in some cases, you may stifle the natural dialogue between your students if you do. But there are three things you always want to look for when you’re participating in a discussion.

• If a student posts false information, give other students an opportunity to correct it, but if nobody does, make sure you intervene. Students will often take your silence as acceptance of what the student posted.
• Urge them to dig deeper. If a student post isn’t going as far as you’d like, ask a probing question to get the student to think a little harder.
• Let the students know you’re there. Even if you don’t need to intervene for one of the above reasons, post for the sake of posting. It will assure your students you are in fact reading the discussion.

Don’t be afraid to experiment

Just as each face-to-face class has its own culture, so too does each online class. What students will respond to varies from discipline to discipline and sometimes even class section to class section. Don’t be afraid to try something new and see how strongly students respond to it.

Often when instructors transition to teaching online for the first time, they worry about losing their connection to their students through the dynamic interactions of class discussion. But in online discussions, you often trade immediacy for depth, as students have more opportunity to gather their thoughts, consult their texts, and compose. I’ve heard instructors say they get to know their online students better than their face-to-face students without ever meeting some of them.

But coaxing true engagement from students is a tricky thing. I hope these tips help you get a little bit more out of your discussions.