Actively engaging in online discussions should be fun as well as educational. Your course policies can establish reasonable student expectations about online discussions in your class. Remember, this may be the very first online learning experience for your students. Let them know that even though they won't physically see you and their fellow classmates during online discussions, they will have ample opportunity to interact in new ways online. Every effort should be made to promote active participation and interaction, along with providing clear guidance about proper etiquette for online behavior. Students also need to be aware of the additional demands online discussions will place on their time. You can help avoid frustration and confusion with well-defined course policies in your course syllabus.

The following items offer some guidelines for developing your own online discussion policies:

• Contacting the professor. Students should be urged to use the Discussion Board when communicating with you instead of using email or telephone (--naturally, an emergency is an exception). This way, the entire class can benefit from student questions and your answers, plus you won't have to repeat yourself constantly. In addition, students often volunteer to answer other student questions in a public forum, making your job easier. You can also create and make available a "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs) document and require students to check it before contacting you. This will cut down on redundant questions and time-consuming correspondence.
• Interacting with students. Caution students that while you will make every effort to respond to direct questions in a timely manner, they should not expect that you will participate in every discussion thread. Assure students that this doesn't mean you are ignoring them or unsatisfied with their performance--it simply means that, at times, you want them to take the initiative in carrying on their class discussions.
• Posting grades. You will need to manually grade and post the results for discussions in Blackboard. Providing timely feedback to students is crucial in creating successful online discussions. Students appreciate prompt evaluation and responses.
• Scheduling. Online discussions are more flexible than face-to-face class conversations, but they are not self-paced. You need to make sure students understand that there is a schedule with real deadlines. Otherwise, your weekly online discussions and assignments can quickly degrade into pandemonium, with students turning in assignments late and failing to participate in discussions in a timely manner.
• Setting deadlines. In general, you should make it clear that you do not accept late posts. If anything, the importance of deadlines is heightened in an online discourse, where classmates are often dependent on each other's timely participation. You should inform students of the precise dates and times when posts are due (e.g., Monday, June 10, 11:59 PM or, in other words, before the next day). If students will be out of town and away from a computer connected to the Internet, advise them to work ahead. If an emergency arises (and they always do), let students know that they should make prior arrangements with you before the assignment posts are actually due.
• Participating in class. Requiring participation in online discussions is the best way of encouraging students to interact. There are no "wallflowers" in online discussions.
• Warning about workload -- online discussions always require more time and effort than traditional ground-based discourse because communications are entirely in writing. It takes longer to have conversations online because it requires more time to read and write than speak and listen. In addition, a fair amount of online communications is asynchronous (i.e., there are delays between when you send a message and someone responds).
• Outlining acceptable behavior online. Clearly stipulate that you expect students to treat each other with respect. There is a long and well-documented history of how online communications can be abused on the Internet. In fact, rules of conduct, often called Netiquette, have been developed to minimize improper behavior online. By including rules of conduct for online discussions in your course policies, you can help avoid the pitfalls of improper behavior. The next section provides some guidelines for developing these rules. You can also visit the Netiquette Home Page for additional suggestions.
• Accommodating students with disabilities. Students who have documented disabilities that require assistance in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact the appropriate college office as well as the instructor to make the necessary arrangements to ensure that they can participate in online discussions.
• Establishing an original work policy. The Internet provides students with a great temptation to "borrow" the works of others, by simply copying and pasting it. Make sure you define plagiarism and clearly state that it is unacceptable in all its forms. Spell out the penalties for plagiarism and insist on original work. Warn students that posting an assignment used in another course is strictly forbidden. In addition, provide information about how to cite research online. (For details, click Citing Online Information) Tip: A number of software packages now exist that can help you spot plagiarism. Check with your IT department about what is available on your campus.

Resource Links