Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
If the path to your online degree requires a great deal of interaction on a discussion board, you probably enjoy it. It's a great place to get to know your fellow e-learners, and it helps you keep from feeling that you're absolutely alone in the e-learning space. At the same time, if you have questions, it's often easier to ask a classmate instead of asking the instructor. No one wants to feel foolish, and it's good to have a buddy system. You're in a situation where you get to discuss the course and gain a deeper appreciation of different approaches and perspectives to the work. Beware, though -- there can be pitfalls in the discussion board, and potentially dangerous areas.
Discussion Boards Pros
- Connect personal experience with course content
It is always interesting to hear what others think about the same reading, and the same assignment. When you read an article or do online research, you may wonder if your thoughts are on-track with what you’re supposed to be getting out of the writing.
- Chance to ask questions, feel comfortable with ambiguity
- Develop learning community
- Peer reinforcement and collaboration
- Connection between readings / course content & learners' lived experience
- Evoking and building on prior knowledge
- Post and share learner support items
- Share / create portfolios and galleries of images / projects / presentations
Discussion Board Cons
Can you trust everything you read in the discussion board? Which posts are reliable, and which are not? Learning critical thinking skills and how to judge the reliability of information is a skill you'll find very useful in a world of blogs, wikis, Twitter, and other interactive ways to share information and opinions. Sometimes something is believed simply because everyone wants it to be true. We can see that all the time in e-mail chain letters on urban myths. Below are a few issues to keep in mind as you respond to prompts and as you read classmates' posts.
Cognitive Domain Dangers: Can You Trust What You Read?
The cognitive domain covers the knowledge and information you're learning in your course, and it also refers to where and how mental processing takes place. One of the most fundamental lessons of learning is that learning is continuous -- you're always learning, even when you may not think you are. So — with that in mind, remember that it is as easy to learn wrong information and practices.
You’ve seen it in your daily life – the news flash that goes viral – rumors of celebrity deaths or causes of deaths, rumors about the financial health of a bank or a company. People behave as though these rumors are true.
You might not think that the same thing would happen in an
online course, but it can because the discussion board is essentially a social network and the same behaviors occur there.
Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the discussion board is that one tends to let go one’s critical thinking skills and begin to trust things that are posted.
One of the most radical cognitive issues ushered in by Web 2.0 applications is that that participants tend to stress community member-contributed knowledge.
This gives way to a mentality of "Knowledge is a construct, mediated by the community,"
which can be dangerous.
- Like YouTube videos going viral, the information shared may be incomplete, inaccurate, misleading
- Like blogs and social networking sites, what you share is not necessarily anything more than an opinion, but it possesses authority & could confuse people
- Like social networking sites, the attention-getting and emotion-grabbing are more appealing; the faux chases out the real (if one is not careful)
- Can distract from the outcomes / outcomes assessments
- Learning objects can be the anchors — tie to the assessments that will be required
Core Strengths of the Discussion Board: Affective Domain
Before you give up entirely on the discussion board, keep in mind that the discussion board emulates real life and the social networks (in the real world and in the virtual world) that you interact with. Learning takes place by sharing information and emulating the positive behaviors of others.
- Sense of community (need for affiliation)
- Develop positive self-concept
- Motivating - goal-setting, affirmation, recognition
- Develops sense of self-efficacy
- Self-determination
The strongest benefits occur in the affective domain – the part of learning that engages your feelings and emotions. This is where you find ways to motivate yourself and to satisfy innate needs that you as a human being possess.