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This article<\/a> originally appeared in Bonni Stachowiak's Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours Column on EdSurge<\/a>. It is reposted here with permission.\u00a0You can pose a question for a future column\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Dear Bonni: How can we make student-to-student interaction more personable and engaging in online learning? \u2014Andrea Fuentes, Director of Online Learning, Doral College<\/em><\/p>\n Cultivating an engaging environment can be a challenge when teaching online. Having the interaction occur among students, instead of solely with the professor, can be even more difficult.<\/p>\n It can be a delicate balance to try to not overwhelm students by the quantity of educational technology we use in a class, while still keeping things interesting through the element of surprise. The easier a tool is to use, the more likely students will feel comfortable engaging with each other.<\/p>\n As an example of the kind of tool that is easy to use, I was recently introduced to a brainstorming tool called\u00a0Tricider<\/a>\u00a0(thank you\u00a0Michelle Pacansky-Brock<\/a>, faculty mentor for digital innovation at California Community Colleges).\u00a0Tricider<\/a>\u00a0has us identify what crowdsourced decision we want to make, or what type of brainstorming we\u2019d like to spark, and we are up and running.<\/p>\n Students can add ideas, pros and cons, and vote on items. The instructor can decide if you want to let anyone who has the link be able to collaborate, protect your ideas with a password, or require people to set up accounts before they can engage.<\/p>\n This is just one example of a tool that makes it easy for student-to-student interaction without requiring much effort from instructors to set it up. A few others that are simple to use include:<\/p>\n We need to rethink discussion boards if they are ever going to be worthwhile. I am afraid that students\u2019 experiences in classes they have taken in the past may be ruining the format for everyone.<\/p>\n Students tell me that when they encounter a discussion board, they expect to see a long discussion prompt from the instructor with some questions they are supposed to answer in 300 to 400 words. Then, like clockwork, they will be required to respond to three other students\u2019 posts within the same thread.<\/p>\n They learn to check the box\u2014but they do not find themselves engaging in beneficial interactions with others in the class. Instead of reminding students of these past experiences, try rethinking discussion boards and having students be surprised by the richness of the dialog.<\/p>\n One way I have been experimenting with a different approach involves using the peer grading function in the Canvas LMS and setting up student-to-student interactions that way.<\/p>\n This past semester, each student submitted reading notes as an assignment in the LMS. I asked every participant to include in their responses:<\/p>\n Then, I designated two peer reviewers for each submitted reading assignment and asked that reviewers respond to the takeaways and ways the learning could be applied, and to provide an answer to the question that was posed by each of the two people they were connected with via the peer review feature.<\/p>\n The students said they far preferred this method of interaction over discussion boards. They liked that the system automatically linked them to different people they might not have otherwise shared ideas with. The ease with which these pairs were established was appreciated by all\u2014including me as the professor.<\/p>\n The only thing that was cumbersome on my end was grading student participation since there wasn\u2019t a way to include scores within the peer review framework on Canvas. However, the slight increase in manual processes made it totally worth it as I observed their virtual conversations with each other.<\/p>\n Another way to get students talking with each other in different ways is to have them use video or audio to interact.<\/p>\n FlipGrid<\/a>\u00a0is an easy way to pose a question and have people respond via videos. It can be used within many of the most widely used LMSs, so students do not have to set up a separate account on FlipGrid or navigate to a different place.<\/p>\n Another tool to engage with video is a video platform from\u00a0Arc Media<\/a>, which can be integrated into the Canvas LMS. Instructors can upload a video or post a YouTube link within Canvas to your Arc library. Then, they can include that video in a Canvas course and have students interact with the video, by typing comments in real time as they are watching it.<\/p>\n My students watched some of\u00a0Michael Sandel\u2019s videos from his Harvard University course: Justice<\/a>. I posted the YouTube link into Arc and it allowed us to have a private conversation on Canvas about the questions he posed. What made it different was that as Sandel posed a question to his class, I had my students respond at the moment he asked the question using Arc.<\/p>\n VoiceThread<\/a>\u00a0is another tool that allows for the kind of real-time interaction that Arc Media affords, except that you can post more than just video for annotations from others. A student could comment that he was confused about a concept at the precise moment that the idea was being discussed. Other students could help out by explaining how they understood the topic and possibly by providing an example.<\/p>\n Those are just a few tools I have found helpful for facilitating student-to-student interaction using video. Each time I have, students have noted how much more they prefer this kind of interaction over traditional text-based discussion boards.<\/p>\n Writer, teacher, and Harvard Ph.D. candidate,\u00a0Clint Smith III<\/a>, recently professed his love for purchasing used books on Twitter. “I really enjoy buying used books because you get some small insight into how someone else experienced that book before you. Every highlighted sentence, underlined passage, circled word, & dogeared page is like being part of a book club with a stranger you'll never meet.”<\/p>\n I really enjoy buying used books because you get some small insight into how someone else experienced that book before you. Every highlighted sentence, underlined passage, circled word, & dogeared page is like being part of a book club with a stranger you'll never meet.<\/p>\n \u2014 Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) January 2, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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\nMake it Easy for Students to Interact<\/h3>\n
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Rethink Discussion Boards<\/h3>\n
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Discuss via Video<\/h3>\n
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<\/figure>\nIntroduce Social Annotation as a Means to Engage<\/h3>\n
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