In my last post, I introduced discussion boards and how you might effectively incorporate them into your classes. In this, post, I will discuss their advantages.
Advantage #1: Students love them (especially the introverts)
When I ask students what they like most about my classes, they almost always mention the discussion boards. Introverted students especially love them because their voices are finally heard. In discussion boards, it’s not the loudest person who wins, it’s the most insightful.
I was going to omit the question mark for this post’s title, but I realized that would be too presumptuous. There are lots of advantages to using discussion boards for teaching, but there are disadvantages as well. Because this post ended up being a tad longer than I had expected, I’m going to break it up into three parts. In Part 1, I’ll introduce discussion boards and how to effectively incorporate them into your classes. In Parts 2 and 3, I’ll discuss their advantages and disadvantages, respectively.
During my last post, we discussed the idea of students requesting Facebook interaction from their professors. I received a good amount of feedback regarding interacting with students outside of the classroom from readers and even friends and family who read the blog. I love the idea of using Yammer or LinkedIn for in-network social situations. And, I agree that it is a huge organizational challenge (work, school, or otherwise) when direct reports or students request social interaction you are not comfortable with. I’ve even spoken with colleagues who have asked students what their classroom expectations are. And, students are now expecting texts, Facebook messages, and other communications outside of the classroom.
Recently, I gave ideas to a journalist writing how applicants can demonstrate they are concerned with the bottom line. Granted, people will be concerned about customer service, teamwork, and doing an overall good job. However, the journalist’s angle was informing job seekers how to be seen as bottom-line applicants. Examples he provided were an employee whose role is computer work, but helping other departments by using a forklift, and a CEO modeling good behavior by using public transportation. However, I think this mindset misses a few crucial points.
The news stories in this column have been gathered through the use of a Google News Feed. They are neither filtered nor endorsed by SIOP but aggregated automatically using specific search terms.
