I recently attended the STLHE-2009 conference where a thought-provoking talk
was given by Edna Keeble of Saint Mary's University (Halifax, NS). She presented
a study of the use of an online lab+discussion board within a political science
course. It should be stated up-front that this is an award-winning teacher, very
engaging, very passionate about both her subject and teaching.

She chose to replace some of the more standard reading and writing work in her
course with use of an online tool called The Democracy Lab. Using the Democracy
Lab discussion boards was therefore not in addition to the normal workload, it
was part of the normal workload. She had decided to go this route because, like
all of us, she had heard again and again how using online tools would help the
current generation of students engage.

The results came as a huge surprise to Dr Keeble. There was a very large
discrepancy between her expectations and the results. She had clearly specified
her expectations for such things as time spent using the system, number of
comments posted, documents read, and word count of postings at the outset so
that the students would know if they were on-track. The target numbers for all
of these categories were based on the fact that the work with this online tool
replaced another type of major assignment. When comparing expectations and
results, she was stunned and devastated. A few students had exceeded her
expectations but the rest had fallen far short in all categories. Her
expectations were for more-or-less gaussian distributions centred roughly on the
specified targets but the results showed consistently *all* of that central lump
shifted quite significantly to much-lower-than-desirable. With only a few
exceptions, the students failed this component of the course despite the fact
that this was meant to play to their strengths!

During the ensuing discussion, one audience member (forget who, sorry) suggested
that the disappointing results may be due to the current students liking
technology as part of their social lives but not wanting it "sullied" by
involvement in school, anything not social.

Certainly food for thought.


Regards,


- Magdalen Normandeau.


(STLHE = Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education)


--- In astrolrner@yahoogroups.com, "grudnick74" <grudnick@...> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> I am toying with the idea of using facebook as a medium to hold online
discussions for my introductory astronomy class.
>
> My plan is to leave it as a free-form discussion with the idea that students
may post all sorts of questions there, ranging from administrative ones to
content-related questions. My hope is that if a few students get actively
involved then it help convince the others to do so as well. We have blackboard
at the University of Kansas but most students are on facebook and check very
regularly, which is not the case for blackboard. I would hope that it would
make online discussions more of an integral part of their normal online
presence.
>
> I was wondering if anyone had experience with this media or had any general
ideas?
>
> Cheers,
> Greg
>