I agree that you need to build in incentives/points/grades for the on-line discussion. They are now required to take two classes --presumably show up and take notes and participate? in the classroom and take notes, keep up, and chit-chat in the discussion forum. I have employed the discussion forum only a couple of times and have not had great success (ha, can you tell?). I want to make sure that it serves a purpose. Mine was for them to exchange viewpoints on the lessons/issues presented and feel freer to participate with me or others more informally. If you get too informal here you can run into other troubles. I had heard the babble about getting the shy students to open up. I haven't seen much of that. Students themselves told me that I would need to create more formal exercises, make them worth points, and require them--much like I might do in class with homework, discussion groups, etc. While I do not do a lot of group activities in class, I will have them form discussion groups or work on problems that I present. I wasn't having a problem with this in class but thought the discussion online might be even better. I ended up spending a lot of time structuring the on-line activities and also working on things in class---they ended up having two classes to attend and I ended up teaching two classes. I did not feel the pay-off in terms of real learning was increased (as evidenced by the kinds of discussions and the objective---not subjective, objective exams. Just another viewpoint. It was probably my lack of patience. I am hoping to hear more success stories, and may have a conversion experience so that I can give testimony, praise Blackboard! at a teacher's conference ;-) Gary
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