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Discussions and Discussion Boards

Rethinking Discussion Boards

Discussion boards are often used as a way to facilitate conversation and encourage engagement for asynchronous, hybrid, and even traditional face-to-face courses. Many of us are used to the common pattern of posting a prompt, asking students to respond with their own original post, and expecting replies to x number of classmates’ posts. This structure, however, can leave much to be desired for both the faculty and students. Discussion boards are intended to stimulate conversation, but instead, they end up feeling forced and painful. In order to change that, we can think about how we are structuring discussion boards/forums.  

Discussion Rubrics

If you are looking for simple or more elaborate templates for discussion rubrics, visit this site from the University of Central Florida (UCF).