Stimulating Discussion

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Improving Communication
Between Individuals
Improving Group Discussions

I. Improving Communication Between Individuals
Some people are under the impression that putting your class on-line will reduce the amount and quality of contact students have with you and each other. This is simply not true. Following are some examples demonstrating the contrary:

A. On-line Office Hours

By offering virtual office hours in addition to the ones you hold in your actual office you can dramatically increase both your availablity and the effectiveness of your meetings with students.
How many times have you sat in your office waiting for eager students to arrive to no avail? What about the students who never come to your office hours, but want last minute tips before a paper is due or a test is scheduled? Of course you can't hold office hours at midnight the night before the final when most of your students are realizing they don't really get the genitive case (to use an example from my own discipline). You don't want to be on campus at that hour, your students don't want to wait in the hall outside of your office wasting precious minutes they could be studying, and let's face it, it wouldn't be prudent to meet students at that hour in light of the increasing concern about sexual harassment on campus. You could, however, offer a one-hour on-line session at midnight with little inconvenience to yourself or your students. Of course you may choose not to hold such a session for other reasons - maybe you feel it isn't pedagogically sound to encourage your students to cram - but that's another matter.

B. E-mail

Anyone who has used e-mail to correspond with friends across campus - or across the continent - knows that it is an informal and exciting way to keep in touch. These qualities make it a fun and non-threatening way to communicate with your class.
Students who may be too shy to approach you after a lecture might feel more comfortable writing you an e-mail after class with a question about something they didn't quite understand. Similarly, you might not always want to single out a student in front of the whole class by complimenting her on her progress, or warning her about improper behavior. This could be misunderstood by some students as favoritism or unfair treatment. An e-mail is both more discreet and more personal. Keep in mind however that e-mail messages are notoriously difficult to interpret. A student could easily misinterpret the tone of your message and be crushed. Be careful how you phrase things. You might consider using emoticons.

Here are some tips for using e-mail effectively with your class:

  1. Make sure all of your students have an e-mail account the first day of class. Have some of the handouts from artsci computing ready to give your students in case they haven't set up their accounts yet, or don't know how to use them. Make it part of their first assignment to set up their accounts.
  2. Collect your students' e-mail addresses and send them a mail that first day/week welcoming them to the class and checking the address. Ask them to respond to you in the text of the message.
  3. Make your e-mail address known to your students. Put it on your syllabus and encourage them to write to you with comments and questions. You should include a mailto button on your course page.
  4. Make sure you respond to your students' messages in a timely manner. If they think you don't have time to respond to them they will be reluctant to e-mail you in the future.
  5. Instruct your students to check their mail once a day. If you intend to send them important messages via e-mail you must make that clear from the onset. You don't want to get the 'ol "I didn't know - I didn't check my e-mail" excuse. Of course you must get messages to your students far enough in advance for them to get them before class. If you tell them to check their mail once a day you'd better get your messages sent at least a day in advance.
  6. Distribute a list of the students' e-mail addresses in class. Some instructors put a class directory with mailto buttons on their course page. Encourage students to write each other and discuss the reading, their assignments, etc. Ultimately a group discussion forum might be better suited for this type of exercise.
C. E-pals

Another way to take advantage of e-mail is to encourage your students to correspond with an e-pal, the computer version of a penpal.
E-pals are especially useful in the virtual foreign language classroom where students can practice writing a foreign language in an actual communicative situation. There are services which help to pair up e-pals, but you might just happen to know some native speakers (friends abroad, exchange students, faculty members) who would be interested in writing your class for a few months. Although I have placed this activity in the context of foreign language learning I am sure that the concept can be applied to other disciplines. Any writing course could make use of such an arrangement by creating a virtual writing workshop, and I don't see why students in the natural sciences couldn't enjoy similar benefits from exchanging ideas with students from other universities.

Do a search for e-pals/keypals/penpals to find out what is out there in your particular discipline. Here are a couple of links I found:

II. Improving Group Discussions
Computer mediated communication (CMC) not only improves communication between individuals, it can also improve communication within a group. Creating an on-line discussion forum for your class enables you to increase the scope of your discussion, extend the invitation to participate to more students, and escape the spacial and temporal limitations of the traditional classroom.

Listservs
Definition: A listserv is an email address that is shared by a group of individuals, e.g., your class. Mail sent to the "list address" is automatically distributed to everyone in your class. Replies to mail that was sent to the list will also go to all members of the list.

A. Your Class Listserv

Listservs are one possible way to create an on-line discussion forum for your class. They allow a message sent to the list to be received by all members of the list. Unfortunately listservs are difficult to set up. Instead of listservs, Arts & Sciences Computing recommends that instructors request that an alias include be set up in their class account for them. An alias include functions like a listserv. I suggest that you set up a class account - which you keep separate from your personal account - to house your alias include list as well as your course page and student projects.

Follow these steps to set up your account and alias include list:

  1. Go to Arts and Sciences Computing in the bottom of Cupples I. Request an account for your class by filling out the appropriate form.
  2. Once you have collected your students' e-mail addresses send an e-mail to help@artsci requesting that they set up an alias include for your class . You will need to provide the list of e-mail addresses you want included on the list with the message.
  3. Once you know the address for your class e-mail list make a link to it on your course page.
  4. Test the list by sending out a message to the class. Make it something meaningful - people hate getting that "this is just a test" message.
  5. Make one of the students' first assignments be to post something relevant to the class list. You could have them lurk (subscribe without contributing) in a professional listserv and report their findings to the class list. Professor Zapalac had her students do this in her on-line history class. She describes this activity in her project description at: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~kzapalac/courses/stlouis. html
Note: As explained above in reference to individual e-mails, it is imperative that you instruct your class to check their e-mail at least daily. Inform them that you will be sending important messages via e-mail which they will be held responsible for reading before class.

Distance Learners & Physically Challenged Students
One advantage of on-line discussion forums is that they allow a greater number of students to participate in class discussions. Technology equalizes students to some degree. Students who cannot attend classes on campus due to physical disablity or distance have equal access to on-line discussions. Of course this access is dependent upon their possession of a computer and access to an internet provider and e-mail account. Some students might find themselves discriminated against due to their class or race.

Don Maxwell at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College discusses his first experience teaching an on-line distance learning class. He offers a few thoughts on the advantages the technology offers disabled students based on his experiences with a deaf woman in his class. Take a look at his afterthoughts.

Guest Lecturers & Native Informants
On-line discussion forums are also unique in that they allow instructors to call upon experts in their fields around the world. Although your department may not always be able to finance a lecture by THE leading authority in your discipline, you may be able to contact that person via e-mail and ask him or her to respond to your students' questions on-line. Foreign language teachers might contact natives of the country they study and request them to answer students' questions about a certain cultural event or custom.

The subscribers to your list do not have to be prestigious to add depth to your discussions. James O'Donnell at Upenn describes how students and faculty from around the world enriched his introductory class on Augustine of Hippo by providing new perspectives gained from their culture, experience, religion, and a myriad of other variables. After adding a listserv in his class for the first time he explains:

"I cannot imagine ever passing a semester in the classroom without the umbilical cord to the network to energize, diversify, and deepen what we do."

Take a look at his article published in the Religious Studies News.

B. Professional Listservs

In addition to your course listserv, which serves as a shared e-mail account for your class, you might want to encourage your students to subscribe to professional listservs in your discipline. These discussion lists are topic-oriented forums distributed by e-mail, dealing with a wide variety of interests.Once you've subscribed to a listserv discussion list, messages from other subscribers and/or the moderator are automatically sent to your electronic mailbox. Some listserv lists have a person who manages the list messages. The moderator reviews all messages and may not distribute those determined inappropriate. Some listservs will send 1 or 2 e-mail messages a week, others will send up to 200 a day. Therefore an important part of subscribing to a listserv is knowing how to unsubscribe.

Directions for Subscribing to a Listserv

To subscribe to a listserv

  1. send an email to the Listserv address (which starts LISTSERV@.....)
  2. leave the subject line blank
  3. write one line in the body of the email message
      SUB listname firstname lastname
    where name is the name of the listserv, firstname is your first name, lastname is your lastname.
To unsubscribe to one of these listservs
  1. send an email to the Listserv address (which starts LISTSERV@.....)
  2. leave the subject line blank
  3. write one line in the body of the email message
      UNSUB listname firstname lastname
    where name is the name of the listserv, firstname is your first name, lastname is your lastname.

Finding Listservs

Since the quality of listservs varies so greatly the best way to find good ones in your field is often by word of mouth. There are however a few directories of listserv addresses you can start with:

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