Presentation slides by Scott Anderson, Mary Power and Samar Mohamed - all of the University of Waterloo. Presentation date: Despt. 25, 2013

1. Engaging Students with
Discussion Forums
Samar Mohammed
Mary Power
Scott Anderson
Centre for Teaching Excellence

2. Session Outline
• General uses of discussions on campus
• Specific examples from courses
• Discussion

3. Some General Uses of Forums
Course management:
• sign up for projects -- everyone can see
who has what topic/prof can easily see full
list
• "ask your TA" or "ask the Prof"
• graded forums
• course/instructor feedback forums

4. Some more common uses of forums
Community building:
• introduce yourself
• group collaboration space (projects)
• use to find a group (e.g. study group;
special interest group)
• community groups (external to courses)

5. Some General Uses of Forums
Engagement:
• wide open board -- posting for current
affairs (posting for current affairs)
• group discussion (e.g. topic/question of
the week) - summary posted to whole class
• peer review of paper (or sections)
• ask the presenters - discussion board

6. Physics 111
• Phys 111 Fall 2012 and 2013 (900 students)
• Phys 111 Winter 2013 (400 students)
• One 50 minute tutorial slot for each student
(tutorials staffed by 10 TAs in Fall, 4 in Winter with
1 or 2 lead TAs responsible for managing the
online details)

7. Instructors epiphany:
Eric Mazur - peer instruction
Karen Cummings - group work with context rich questions
Development of a Problem Solving Assessment Tool for Introductory Physics Students, K. Cummings, and T.
French, Proceedings of the National Physics Education Research Conference, Rochester, NY, pp 87-91,
August (2001)
Peer Instruction: From Harvard to Community Colleges Nathaniel Lasry, Eric Mazur and Jessica Watkins Am.
J. Phys., 76, 1066-1069 (2008).

8. Course structure
• Group sign up – tutorial not mandatory (10% optional
weighting)
Used self-enrolment group option - 200 member max therefore
multiple groups necessary

9. Course structure
• Students then randomly assigned to groups of 3 or 4
within tutorial section - WEEKLY.
• Students submit a reading assignment to discussion
board restricted to each small group
• In tutorial – students discuss their posts then solve
complex, context rich problems with group.
• Post tutorial – survey to evaluate group members,
weekly quiz

10. Challenges:
• no easy way to generate groups from a subset of
students (i.e. those registered for the Group Problem
Class or even those in a particular tutorial section)
• no easy way to create a survey with data specific to
teams / team members (for example questions like “Did
Joe Student attend the class?”)

11. Group Assignment
1. Export registration list
and generate groups in
Excel. Provides group
number and member letter
(program written in C)
2. Sign up individual
students to their respective
groups on LEARN (in
house group tool)

12. • Pre-tutorial writing assignment – “week in
summary” submitted to group discussion

13. Post Group work
• Survey - to assess their team mates
contribution in order to be eligible for bonus
marks, their own mark is controlled by their
colleagues
• Online quiz (individual work mandatory for all)
- to assess the learning of the weeks material

14. Survey Assessment
1. Students reference
Team Member List on
LEARN (generated from
Excel).
2. Students fill
out survey.
Identical week
to week.

15. Syde 543
Activities:
• Researcher Profile
• Expert Panel
• Mid-Course Feedback

16. Researcher Profile Activity
1. Students post to a general discussion topic “A” the name
of the researcher they selected.
2. Each student submits his/her draft to a discussion topic
“B”- 1 page limit
3. Each student reviews and provides constructive feedback
to three of his/ her classmates profiles. There was a limit
of three feedbacks per initial posting.
4. Each student posts a final profile to a discussion topic “C”
highlighting the changes that were made due to feedback
received.

17. Discussion Topic A

18. Discussion Topic B- Draft and Feedback

19. Discussion Topic C- Final Submission

20. Instructor’s Experience
“The use of discussion forums had the advantage
of keeping each student’s activities visible to the
entire class, a key goal for the assignment. It also
was relatively easy to setup and manage for the
instructor, with minimal involvement needed to
manage conflicts in selection of researchers, and a
clear and easy way of assessing whether parts of
the assignment were completed on time.”
J. Histon, U. of Waterloo, Using Online Learning Tools to Support Increased Engagement in
Human Factors Courses: The Researcher Profile Assignment, HFES, Oct. 2013

21. Expert Panel
• Using LEARN, students sign up with a partner to
be members of an expert panel using discussion
Topic A- maximum 2 pairs per week.
• Each pair prepares a 2 page summary of the
topic to submit to the instructor.
• Remaining members of the class post 2
questions for the expert panel to discussion
forum B prior to class
• Expert panel leads discussion in class

22. Discussion Topic A Sign-up sheet

23. Expert Panel Discussions Forum B

24. Mid-course Feedback

25. Grading – GEOG 203
• 165 students
• 9 Tutorial sections
• 5 TAs
• Critical reflection on readings and class
• Post first board for each Tutorial section
• Weekly submission for 10 weeks (90
discussion boards) – worth 20% overall

26. Weekly Forums

27. “Topics” (Boards) for each
Tutorial section

28. Default Naming of “Topics”
& Renaming

29. Manually set “Post First”
for each Topic

30. Manually set “Assessment”
for each Topic

31. Must have separate Grade
items for each “Topic”

32. Grid View

33. Grid View

34. Reading View

35. Grading Detail

36. Assess Topic

37. Assess Topic - Users

38. Assess Topic - Assessments

39. Grading Detail – Assess Topic

40. Gradebook

41. Grading Detail – Gradebook

42. TAs Preferences Differ
• Grade directly from the board
• Use Gradebook
– use separate browser to view messages and
grades
• Use Excel (and upload)
– File format for uploading finicky

43. Viewing Grade / Feedback
• If grading in the discussion boards
(Topics), it MUST be linked to the
gradebook otherwise there is no way for
students to view the grade and feedback

44. Acknowledgements
We thank the instructors below for allowing
us to use examples from their classes:
• Joe Sanderson – PHYS 111
• Jonathan Histon – SYDE 543
• Steffanie Scott – GEOG 203

45. Comments or Questions?