This document provides guidance for creating effective discussion boards. It outlines strategies for encouraging student participation, defining participation requirements, crafting engaging discussion questions, encouraging new ideas, moderating discussions, and establishing discussion etiquette. Specific tips include relating questions to learning objectives, incorporating multimedia, assigning students to different sides of an issue, being an active presence by asking questions, and establishing clear grading criteria and performance standards. The document also provides a netiquette statement and advises keeping individual posts short while supporting statements with evidence. It discusses implementing discussion boards within the MindTap learning management system using the Connect Yard app.

1. By Joseph Charleman
5/14/18
Creating a
Discussion Board

2. Creating A Discussion Board
• This session will cover strategies for creating discussion forums.
• Encourage active student participation and dramatically increase student to student engagement.
• Using the Connect Yard app within the mind tap.
• Grading the discussion board and feedback.
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3. Creating A Discussion Board
• Define participation requirements.
• Craft an effective question.
• Encourage new ideas.
• Moderate.
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4. Define Participation Requirements
• Share your expectations. Create a discussion where students can read about etiquette and
access grading information.
• Model proper online interaction and reinforce appropriate behavior with public recognition
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5. Craft an Effective Question
• Relate to chapter learning Objectives
• Incorporate multimedia resources into your questions to reduce the monotony of purely text-based
interactions. With the popularity of services like YouTube™, you can ask students to view a clip
and ask for responses.
• Current event topics are the best
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6. Encourage New Ideas
• Professional Discourse is good
• Stir the soup
• If discussion posts contain too much agreement and not enough questioning of ideas, assign
students with the last names A-M to support one side and N-Z to support the other.
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7. Moderate
• You Must be Active
• Establish your presence. Ask for clarification, resources, or input from silent participants.
• Encourage students to research and cite to support there arguments
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8. Discussion Etiquette
• To help students understand your expectations, establish discussion etiquette immediately. You
can model proper online interaction and reinforce appropriate behavior with public recognition.
• Be respectful of other people's opinions and remember the golden rule—to treat others as you
want to be treated.
• For graded forums and threads, tell students specifically what you expect both in terms of quantity
and quality of posts. You can even share some exemplary posts. You can also use rubrics to help
students understand your objectives. When you compile your grading criteria in a rubric, you can
provide students with clear performance standards and grade consistently.
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9. Etiquette for Students
• Netiquette Statement:
• Netiquette can be defined as appropriate online behavior. Since you will be communicating with your
professor and your classmates, the following guidelines are important.
• Avoid flaming, which is defined as using derogatory, obscene, or inappropriate language. For example,
let's say that in an online conversation, you unintentionally offend someone. You could then expect to
receive some angry e-mail or to be treated rudely in the discussion. This is called "being flamed."
Incidences of flaming will be reported by your professor to Student Services. Therefore, if you have any
doubts about the tone of a message that you have typed, take at least 10 seconds to think about how
your message might be interpreted before clicking on the Send button.
• Avoid using all capital letters in your posts; this is perceived as shouting.
• Avoid spelling and grammatical errors. As with any written work, take the time to use the spell check
feature that can be launched by clicking on the tab next to the Send button.
• http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/15-rules-netiquette-online-discussion-boards/
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10. Strategies
• Faculty Use descriptive subject lines to make threads easy to follow and scan.
• Keep posts short and use uncomplicated language. Your audience is reading onscreen and may have
several messages to read.
• Support your statements with evidence when you agree or disagree with others.
• Use professional language, including proper grammar, in academic-related posts. No slang, emoticons,
or chat acronyms allowed.
• Use attachments or links to websites for long, detailed information.
• Stay on topic. If you want to introduce a new tangent, find a suitable forum or start a new thread if
allowed.
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11. Discussion Board in Mind Tap
• LMS system BlackBoard, Canvas , or Moodle
• Sign into Cengage Mind links / Mind Tap
• Using Connect yard
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12. Date 2016
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13. Welcome Discussion
• Welcome discussion:
• Welcome to the course! Please take some time to introduce yourself to the course. After reading
the syllabus, what items are you excited to learn about? Are you currently employed in the
healthcare field? How will you apply what you will learn in the course to your career?
• Please respond to at least one of your classmates post ( response needs to be at least four
sentences.
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15. Discussion 1
• Engage Students
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdOQUARrEU
• Using engaging questions
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