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Promoting Participation while Managing Your Workload: The Importance of Conference Design in WebTycho

Susan Ko

Director

Center for Teaching and Learning

Published: March-April 2005

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Classroom-management

Interaction has been identified by many research studies, including UMUC's Best Online Instructional Strategies Study, as one of the major determinants of student satisfaction. Many faculty would sincerely like to increase their interaction with students and encourage student participation, but at the same time, they feel overwhelmed by the prospect of investing additional time in reading and responding to student postings. 

In this topic we suggest some ways in which you can foster a dynamic online learning environment for your students while keeping your workload manageable.

Define Participation So Students Know What is Expected of Them

A good method of defining participation is to consider both the frequency and quality of participation when evaluating student contributions to your class.

Use your syllabus to make policy statements about student participation so that students know they are rewarded for quality as well as the minimum number of postings, and as much for their responses to classmates as to you. Use rubrics to support your policy statements with clearly defined criteria for participation.

Finally, you can encourage students to be "good listeners" by asking students to incorporate information from discussion into certain assignments. An assignment that asks students to analyze a particular topic might require that students provide at least one example or point of view as expressed by classmates in the discussion.

Assign Student Presentations and Group Work

Student presentations, whether done individually or in groups, can help promote participation and interaction. Conferences can be earmarked for student presentations, and in WebTycho you have a ready-made structure, the Study Groups area, for students to work on preparing small group projects.

If appropriate for the course objectives, make sure that at least one or two of your assignments are group-oriented. These can take the form of a small-group weekly summary of materials, group reports based on web research or other work, peer review using an instructor devised rubric, etc.

By having groups present their work to the entire class, you will be able to respond to the group as a whole rather than only to individual contributions

Promote Student-to-Student Interaction

Even if required discussion assignments and expectations for participation are listed in your syllabus and you provide a discussion evaluation rubric, student-to-student interactions will not necessarily happen without your deliberate facilitation. The trick is knowing when to spark a conversation with your comments and questions, and when to hold back and let the students talk with one another. If too much time elapses between a student posting and another responding it does tend to discourage students. So at such junctures you might want to jump in with an encouraging remark. You can help stimulate discussion and provide follow-up and encouragement for students to continue a conversational thread. Cooperative group exercises and asking students to post some of their work for others to critique are all ways to structure opportunities for student/student interactions.

How to deter a student from only addressing you? Address a question to all students, or include another student's remarks within your own response.

Make sure a portion of the participation grade for students is based on their responsiveness to the postings of classmates. This ensures that the weight of interaction does not fall solely upon the instructor.

Establish Patterns of Response

Sometimes it's best to wait a day or two before jumping into the discussions in order to allow time for students to respond to each other. You can communicate to the students that this is your approach by saying something like, "Interesting point, Linda. I'm going to wait a day or two before responding to see if others in the class have ideas in regard to this that they want to contribute." This lets students know that you are acknowledging their contribution, but are allowing time and space for all students to participate.

Do try to respond to a diverse group of students each week--not only to the same one or two. It's natural for instructors to gravitate to a handful of actively participating students in any classroom, but online, it's easier to overlook the fact that you are responding to only a selected few since you are not necessarily keeping track of your patterns of response.

Some other tips:

• Engage as many students as possible in discussion, but don't feel that you must respond to each and every posting in the classroom conferences
• Poke your head in the classroom on a frequent basis, even for short periods of time. This will allow you to keep up with student discussions and make students feel that you are more responsive and alert to their needs.
• Do your best to read all postings, even though you may not be able to respond to all.
• Make sure that you immediately refer all technical questions to WebTycho tech support helpdesk.
• Email students who are "absent" from the classroom conferences. Show concern by writing, "Hi, John, haven't seen you in the classroom lately. Wonder if I can be of help to you. Hope there aren't any technical problems keeping you from participating." Or, if the student previously contributed to the discussions, write to encourage more of the same, "Hi, Linda, haven't seen you in the classroom lately. Really miss your comments. With your experience working for aerospace, I think you have a great deal to add to our current conversation concerning fluctuations in the economy based on government policy. Hope you will rejoin us this week!"

Give Feedback in Conferences that Encourages Participation

Some faculty think it is enough to merely post the initial questions and then disappear for the rest of the week. But in fact, the instructor's continued involvement is a critical factor in ensuring that the conference activity is purposeful, effective, engaging, and hits the learning objectives. When the instructor actively participates in the discussion, providing critique, encouragement, and feedback, students tend to become more involved.

As students respond to you and each other, you will be able to respond to the conversation at critical junctures, and help drive it forward. Here are some tips:

• Encourage participants who give superficial responses to provide more in-depth details by asking a specific question or requesting an example from them for clarification.
• Inject follow-up questions or summative responses that address a whole portion of a discussion thread rather than only individual postings within the thread.
• "Call upon" students by name in your posting when you feel that a student has touched on an important point that bears further comment
• Follow up your own comments by inviting students to respond to their classmates' observations. For example, you might ask, "Anyone else want to comment on Ned's observation?" Or you might inquire, "Has anyone else experienced this situation in the workplace?"

For more information about conference design, see Richard Schumaker's article The Importance of Conference Design in WebTycho.

Channel Communication into the Classroom

While email is a necessary component of individualized teaching interaction, it is necessary to establish protocols, i.e. rules for use of email. Otherwise one risks being inundated with email. It is recommended that you sort through email on a daily basis and answer most questions within 48 hours even if it is only to say that you will think about the question and get back to the student.

You may divert email traffic into the shared classroom space by

• creating FAQs or ongoing question and answer forums so that all students can read the answers to recurrent questions.
• complimenting the emailing students on their observations and suggesting or requesting permission to share their observations with the others in the class.
• posting, whenever appropriate, a weekly update of the activities, corrections, issues of the week ahead. You may use the Class Announcements area to do this or send a group email. This eliminates many individual inquiries, gives students a feeling that you are guiding their progress, and keeps them on track as a group.

Finally, observe your own patterns of facilitation and interaction in the online classroom. Create a schedule for your classroom interaction in order to allow for effective management of your time. By developing a methodical approach to tending the classroom, you may find that you have more time to devote to higher quality interaction with your students.