TCU Online: Using Discussions to Promote Student Dialogue and Engagement

Are you looking for ways to extend discussions outside of the classroom and provide opportunities for students to critically think and reflect upon content? Would you like to encourage classroom community while creating an environment which allows students to openly share their thoughts?

The Discussions tool in TCU Online provides a space for you and students to interact and engage with each other. This allows you to encourage equitable student participation, while also gaining insight to student thinking. Discussions can be structured to allow for small-group and whole-class collaboration, and can also be leveraged for individual student journals. Using Discussions in conjunction with the Rubrics tool also allows you to evaluate discussions and provide feedback with an electronic scoring rubric.

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Create and modify whole-class, small-group, and individual student (journal) discussions.
• Enable features such as anonymous posts and voting.
• Attach previously created rubrics from the Rubrics tool.
• Evaluate discussions and provide written, audio, or video feedback.

This workshop meets Koehler Center outcomes 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3.