Day 4 - Use Canvas for Asynchronous Discussion

On Day 1, we briefly covered Canvas Discussions, and you have participated in Discussions in this course already. Canvas Discussions allows you to create a prompt for students to respond to, set a due date, and allows students to respond to each other. These Discussions can be graded or ungraded, and as a TA you can view students' responses in Speedgrader easily to assess them. We'll look at Speedgrader in Day 5. 

You can also set up smaller groups for students to interact with, instead of having a Discussion with an entire class. Using Groups for Discussions in Canvas is essential, particularly in larger courses. Often groups of 4-5 students work best for building relationships and trust, and managing workloads. Imagine as a student how hard it would be to read 40 of your peer's posts! In an online course, having students interact within the same group throughout the semester can help build rapport, trust, and engagement within a group over time (Gernsbacher, 2016). 

For a basic overview of Canvas Discussions, check out What are Discussions? in the Canvas guides.

[Remove this sections if you do not use Piazza]

Piazza for Discussion in Canvas

Two weak points of Canvas Discussions are that students cannot post anonymously, and that very large enrollment courses can be difficult to manage because Canvas Discussions are very linear and inflexible. Some instructors prefer to use Piazza, a tool that integrates with Canvas, for courses with these discussion needs. Piazza also allows instructors to endorse responses, facilitates students working together on problems through a "question and answer" style of forum, allows instructors to post "poll" questions, and  can be organized around homework and problem sets. Thus, Piazza is especially useful in convergent disciplines where students work together on problem solving, like Math or Computer Science.

To learn more about how to best use Piazza, please consult the following resources:

• • • Piazza Overview from DoIT Academic Technology
    • Guide to Piazza from Engineering Professional Development
    • Comparison of Piazza and Canvas from Engineering Professional Development
    • Piazza Demonstration video from Piazza support

If you course uses Piazza, your lead instructor will likely set this up for you. 

Planning Asynchronous Discussions

To get started with planning an asynchronous discussion for your course, make your own copy of the worksheet below: Plan an Asynchronous Discussion.

Build a Discussion in Canvas

The following Canvas Guides walk through the process of creating a new Discussion in Canvas.

• • • • How do I create a discussion as an instructor?
      • How do I add a group set in a course?
      • How do I create a group discussion in a course?
      • How do I assign a graded discussion to a course section?

Facilitating Asynchronous Discussion

In addition to planning and building, you'll also need to think about how you'll facilitate your online discussion. Consider when and how often you want to be involved in the discussion. Generally, some participation is good, but too much instructor or TA participation can stifle student conversation (Key Questions for Designing Online Discussions, n.d.).  Make sure you check in with the Discussion regularly to keep up with students contributions.

Techniques to Further Discussion

Consider employing the following techniques with students to help further their thinking and discussion with each other:

• • • Don't always jump in with the "right" answer. 
    • Help students by tying their ideas to other student posts, or to course content.
    • Ask students to clarify ideas that aren't clear to you or peers.
    • Use probing questions to lead students to think more about a topic or problem. Examples include:
      • "Why do think...?"
      • "What assumptions are we making about...? How would our interpretation be different without this assumption?" 
      • "What additional evidence supports...?" 
      • "What don't we know about...?" 
      • "How does this compare to...?"

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References

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