Post
How many post are sufficient enough for a Discussion Board assignment ?
Donald,
Your explanation helped confirm a trend that I see in my discussion boards. I also use a rubric, which has some samples of posts and the type of grade it would receive. My problem is ensuring that students are reading it as an announcement. As I am writing this now, I am thinking I should re-post that portion in the DB Week 1 discussion.
Does anyone else do something similar with success?
Donald,
We do have to make sure our feedback is appropriate and helps students improve.
We use rubrics and the DB rubric makes it clear that a "nice job, Joe" is not enough for a response. The post must answer the stated problem or comment upon it as directed then the responses have to be helpful and not just critical. Even in Math, things need to be written out so they are in decent English and useful to others.
Many students do just try to say "nice job" or some variation initially, but then other students say something, or I do, and they then post a better reply that is thought out and helpful to others.
After the first week, when a few good students reply in some detail, others follow suit when they see it gets a good response from me and other students.
Donna,
Yes, rubrics help all involved - the students and the instructor. If they don't help both, they are not designed appropriately.
Stephanie and Clovis,
Thanks for continuing the conversation. I think the posts are about quality not quantity.
Clovis,
Are you asking this as in, how many posts are sufficient enough on the part of the student or on the part of the instructor?
Stephanie
I agree that discussion grading rubrics are helpful not only for the instructors but for the students as well. Students are held accountable for the amount of their engagement in the discussion forums. It helps the students as they have clear expectations of the quality of their initial post and responses to fellow classmates. The students formative summaries have been very positive with the grading rubrics! Donna
lisa,
Do you have to do three days? I just wondered. Do you use a rubric to verify the quality of the post? Sometimes students can write two paragraphs, but there's no quality - just quantity. Thanks!
Typically we have a wed/fri/sunday rule. Students have to have two paragraphs per each day.
Cindy,
Do you use a rubric? I find that very helpful. Student then know the criteria for a good post. I also put examples of good and bad posts in my syllabus and a bad post results in zero points. Hope this is helpful.
I have found that less than half of the responses on the discussion forum are sufficient. Most just agree with the original post or tell the original student what a good job they have done.
As for the original posts, most of my students answer the questions and cover the requested material fairly well.
Patricia and Clovis,
I believe in quality over quantity. If you are assessing students by the number of posts, you usually just get that number of posts. There are good rubrics to evaluation discussion board posts that relate to the quality and depth of the post. Thanks for continuing the conversation.
Hi Clovis,
Currently I am required to do a couple different things at different institutions. At one of them I am required to have 10 points in the main decision and 2 in another discussion on time management, at another institution I have to reply to every initial post for topic 1 and then
I have to go and reply after the students comment on my post which will usually end up being around 45 post a week. I think that we have to remember that we have to engage the student and since we are online the discussion is how we are going to get the conversations going. So I do not think there is a magical number but I do think we have to be involved in the discussions every week.
Patricia
Renee,
Sounds like from your description that you could easily develop a rubric to assess their discussion board posts. That is beneficial. Thanks!
Usually there is a topic stated for the discussion and the student should respond to that question and call it their MAIN post. This should be detailed with good content and answer the question posed in the discussion. Then I feel the student should be interacting with at least 2 fellow classmates with additional posts that are applicable. All need to have no spelling, sentence structure issues or grammar issues and if they do points should be deducted accordingly. R. Waters
Clovis,
Please add to the conversation in this forum and not just ask additional questions.
Would you accept this from your students on a discussion board assignment?
