COMMENTARY…
by Jill Kaminski, CSU-Hayward.
As with a hammer, sometimes the threaded discussion board is a wonderful tool, and you wouldnt want to be without it. Examples of well-designed courses that use threaded discussions include those in which students should interact, support, debate, and design with one another in order to fully master the material. Philosophy, political science, education, law, and journalism courses are just a few examples in which well-moderated discussion forums are not only a valuable tool, but are often a technological improvement over live classroom discussions.
Even when the discussion board inclusion in the course is warranted, however, it can be misused. Frequently students are given an assignment asking them to post to a discussion thread, and then respond to the posts of their peers. A grade is assigned based on reading and responding on the forum. However, without guidelines limiting the number of posts, the thread can grow to include more messages than it would be reasonable to expect a student to read. For example, consider a small class of only 15 students. If each student posts, and each student responds once to 10 other students writings, 160 messages will be issued. Usually, the responses generate further dialog (which is part of their significance in the learning process). If each response generates only one additional insight, then 150 more messages are posted, and the exponential growth has begun. With no further dialogue, if it takes each student 30 seconds to either write and send his own message, or retrieve and read another students thoughts, this has become a two and one-half hour assignment.