Reflective Online Teaching: Moving Away from Reading Reports into Forum Posts

Moving Away from Reading Reports into Forum Posts:

Taking advantage of forum platforms online

A common practice in many of our higher education institutions (at least in Costa Rica) is the use of reading reports to assess the level of student understanding of a give topic and to guarantee that students are catching up with the course content readings. Although this type of reports has proven good for many professors, students’ critical thinking skills are not fully broadened and academically well-fed.

Traditional reading reports can yield a twofold effect in courses where they are required. On the one hand, really engaged students can come up with in-depth analysis of course topics through reaction papers and class discussions. They may even produce excellent synopses that really reflect their content understanding and its impact on the students’ way of processing new information, vital for their future careers. On the other hand, traditional reading reports can turn out to be copy/paste exercises for students who are not motivated to analyze an article. Besides, this type of reports are merely written for only one reader (the teacher) and the exchange of ideas with other partners is not usually considered as a way to generate healthy discussions about the topic.

Can the panorama described above be changed to yield “healthy discussions” that can foster student critical thinking skills? Since May 2011 –in my Principles of Curriculum Design course at Universidad Latina-, I have worked with forum posts, rather than written reports, to magnify analysis and discussion among ELT students. Let me explain a bit of my experience so far:

1. To start with, a forum platform is required, whether that is a part of a school LMS (Learning Management System) or a free site online. In my case, since I was introduced to http://www.nicenet.org as part of a course I took with the University of Oregon (Distant Education Programs), it is the platform I get to use. (You may use any other discussion platform available online.)

2. Depending on the length of your course, decide how many forum discussion you want to carry on. One forum discussion is advisable per week.

3. Link the content of the class (reading, presentations, etc.) to the forum discussion by providing students a clear learning outcome and guiding questions aimed at providing some prior reflection before the actual forum interactions.

4. Monitor the students’ forum participations by helping them expand their ideas if necessary, by having them ponder viewpoints they haven’t considered yet, or by pointing out important ideas they have brought into the discussion.

5. Once the forum is over, send students an email message with a short account of the forum highlights to encourage them to continue exchanging ideas and discussing beyond the forum boundaries. Use it to clarify concepts that weren’t used correctly or to strengthen up those issues that didn’t go well within the forum.

No matter the conferencing platform you choose to host your forum discussions, this is a great alternative to replace reading reports. Instead of restricting your students to write a reaction paper on a course topic whose only ready will probably be you, the teacher, have them taste a much more cooperative learning by fostering healthy discussions that will definitely assist students on their development of higher critical thinking skills.

To fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research and expand these areas:

1	Critical thinking skills for EAP
2	EAP (English for Academic Purposes)
3	Conferencing platforms online
4	Forum posts as writing exercises
5	Written discussions etiquette