Back to Promising Practices

Reinforce the Vocabulary of the Discussion Board

Why?

• You cannot assume that all students are comfortable with communicating on the discussion board. Providing information clarifying differences between threads and replies to threads will make communication on the board easier to read and understand. 

Implications for Teaching and Learning.

• Since the discussion board is so important to increased interaction in the online course, explaining the vocabulary of the board helps students understand where and how to post. 
• Clearly telling students that threads are the equivalent of a conversation helps them understand the importance of keeping threads to particular topics and using new threads to change topics. .

Promising Practices for TWU.

• Teach the vocabulary of the discussion board by defining differences between threads and replies. 
• Explain the purpose and intent of threads to facilitate effective communication. 

Understanding the vocabulary of the discussion board and using it to describe activities on the board can reduce student frustration and make it easier for students to navigate and use the discussion board. Clearly explaining and illustrating how a forum functions reduces the amount of incorrect responses and makes communication easier to understand. If you have ever read a Re:Re:Re:Re: Student Introduction - you know exactly what I am talking about.

Discussion Board.

The discussion board is a location within your course. It is the container for all of the forums that you develop for the course. When you mention the discussion board, you are really talking about this container and everything included in the container.

Forum.

A forum can be thought about as a single location (Usually restricted to a single topic) within the discussion board. As instructor, you design and develop the forums. Many times, these are prompts to drive the discussion within that forum.

Thread.

A thread is the initial post on a forum and all associated replies to that post. Threads can be thought of as topics within a conversation. All information on that topic falls under that thread. To change topics, a new thread is started to signal a change in the direction of the discussion.

Post.

An entry to the discussion board. A post can be either a thread or a reply to a thread. This is a generic term and can also be used as a verb.

This is a forum

This shows the Thread: Module1/ Unit 1 and the replies to this thread

Back to Promising Practices