03.25.08
In their own time.
Creating an online discussion space for students provides an environment to which students can contribute in their own time. This is one of the benefits tendered by Graeme Salter in his paper on online discussion groups, and a reason as to why they are emerging so readily from primary school classrooms. Students are being introduced to this interactive means of communicating on a more equal footing, significantly increasing the ability for those students who wouldn’t usually participate, to contribute to discussions. Students can read things as many times they need to and spend time to draft their responses. This enables their participation in a class discussion, where they may not usually contribute as they hadn’t had time to thoroughly process the discussion topic and formulate a response. Writing for a ‘real’ audience, as opposed to just writing for their teacher provides motivation for students to critically reflect on the issue, developing responses that are more well thought out and better articulated. The discussion groups is a good online tool that encourages students to state their position on a topic, but further the students’ thinking on a topic by asking them to support their statement with reasoning. While students are able to include well developed responses, the online discussion space lacks the capacity to enable students to react to visual cues – students’ can’t read others’ body language, paralinguistic characteristics and environmental factors as they are filtered out. The paper goes beyond listing the pros and cons for using online discussion groups, to provide pragmatic strategies on implementing them in the classroom and utilising them to their potential, making the paper an invaluable resource for those thinking about using them within the classroom.
