Official Course Discussion Platforms

Discussion platforms are a great way for students to get involved by asking questions about the course to course staff. They also help facilitate interaction between peers and can even help create a sense of community in engineering courses. When implementing these discussion platforms, it’s important to monitor student interactions and set proper guidelines to ensure that students are following course guidelines.

Below are some examples of discussion platforms and when they are useful:

• Discord: Application that allows course staff to create specific channels and threads for specific topics. Many students are comfortable using Discord, so it’s easy for students to get involved by asking questions and answering other peers’ questions. However, Discord use will usually require some oversight (e.g. moderation and occasional reminders of appropriate communication behaviors).
• Canvas: Canvas allows for discussion boards where students can create posts and respond to other students’ posts. Canvas also has the option to remove. This is especially useful when asking students to respond to a specific prompt.
• CampusWire: Students can create questions and other students or course staff can answer them. Course staff can also add announcements to send out to the entire class. Students are also rewarded for contributing, as they can receive specific badges for answering or creating questions.
• Ed Discussion: Ed Discussion is similar to CampusWire, but it’s specifically tailored for STEM courses. For example, students and course staff can upload code blocks to their posts.

Dig Deeper:

Beyond just posting announcements and having online Q&As, discussion platforms have additional features that improve the quality of a class. A few examples are provided below:

• CampusWire: Instructors can create polls for students to respond to. These polls can also be conducted during class to increase lecture engagement.
• CampusWire: Students can create group chats among themselves or with course staff to communicate in a smaller group setting.
• Discord: Oftentimes courses also have an “off-topic” channel where students and staff can interact beyond the course. This can help build a sense of community and can also help students get to know each other better.

Discussion platforms are a great way to help increase course engagement and to help students stay informed. If you have any concerns about these platforms or ideas on how they can be used to improve education, please let us know! A big part of our UDL and Accessibility Research Group initiatives is in understanding opportunities for improving student and instructor experiences in accessible education.

See you again next time!

-UDL and Accessibility Group
https://publish.illinois.edu/udl-accessibility-group/
gcoe-udlgroup@illinois.edu