Best Practice for Designing and Assessing Online Discussion Questions - McCourt, Yarbrough, and Tanner

What would happen if you went into a classroom and you were asked to "Describe an interesting educational opportunity"? This could create a monologue, rather than a discussion. Rather, what if you had to describe "the last time a student said 'this lesson changed my life'"?

So what are some specific steps that will stir communication in the classroom?

1. Ask Good Questions - The better the question, the better the interaction. Students should know immediately what the instructor wants them to do. (not necessarily what the answer is). Consider open ended questions.  Provide opportunity for students to incorporate personal experience. Also, create relevance through questions. Need to allow students to learn from one another AND problem solve. MUST be tied to course topics and course outcomes. No tangents!! Use Bloom's Taxonomy to consider levels of learning and how to elicit specific thinking from students on your target levels. 
2. Foster Meaningful Discussion - Require participation and provide some guidelines of what that should look like, e.g. 3 different posts on 3 different days of the week. What does a substantive post look like? Not everything needs to be "research-based." Feel free to have students share, rather than regurgitate. Students need an instructor to model good, substantive responses. Some faculty have issues with "having to" do something. Requiring that they have XX number of discussion board or you are not allowed to have XX number of discussion boards. 
3. Consider the type of communication you want to happen and design the questions accordingly:

• Student to Student
• Student to Professor
• Professor to Student

4. Provide clear guidelines for length, word count, number of posts, etc. Use a rubric!!

Gradually, Then Suddenly: How Tech has Changed Teaching in Higher Ed - Brian Kibby

Some students stop paying attention in 4th grade. If that happens, we often lose them for life. That doesn't mean they are going to be a degenerate, that means they likely won't reach their full potential. Welcome to the Army Private Kibby!

So why do SOME faculty do great things with technology and others don't? (Holy Crap! Did these people know that I was coming to this conference? This is tailor made for me!!) So Brian initially starts talking about "coming from a place of 'Yes" vs. coming from a place of 'No'." Sounds a lot like tribal leadership to me! He continues to discuss Positional Authority. Not cool. Stop doing it.

He shares a personal story about a teacher who is intimidated by the idea of a bunch of independent learners (using technology) basically putting teachers out of a job. How many of us have felt intimidated by that idea? It's not that we are going to be out of job. It is that we are going to have to change the way we teach. We need to embrace those (adaptive) technologies and move students to a deeper level of learning. We shift from a "save the people who are naturals at our subject" to "everyone is able to learn more than what they already know." Show advances in learning for everyone.

So how do we do this?

1. Start by saying "Yes" instead of always saying "No." 
2. Find a buddy. Someone who will help you with new things you want to learn. (We were doing this at Putnam City like 5 years ago! Nice validation of personal methods!) 
3. Are you market-driven? If not, you should be. The market of education is changing. If you don't adapt, you won't stay relevant. Nor will you be preparing students to be relevant. 
4. Just because you try something once, don't discount it. Check with your buddy. How can you adapt? 

The crux of the matter is to "try stuff." Brian says within 24 months we will be all digital (or should be).

Comment from the audience - Don't just use a buddy. As an admin, consider how to integrate a "technology boot camp" and provide some $$ for that. This could (has in other places) turn into something MUCH bigger than working with your own faculty.