XplanaZine

Subverting the Discussion Board

I like things that I can use in a whole ton of ways. I don’t like things that tell me exactly how I should use them. Take, for example, your average discussion board… really the key learning tool in most major online learning environments (BTW I’m not counting content distribution and presentation as learning ;o), how many different ways can I, as a teacher or learner, use it???

As a teacher I reckon you can do a fair number of things with a discussion board… you can use them as:

• Places for discussion (OK, fairly obvious that one ;o)
• ‘Shared journals’ (get learners sharing their learning and life experiences with each other)
• Visitors / Review books (learners can read other peoples impressions / ideas and add their own… kinda like Amazon reviews for academic papers)
• Project spaces (can be used by small groups to run projects, complete activities)
• Administration / class management tools (‘Remember there’s a holiday on Friday’, ‘Here are my office hours’, ‘Here’s the feedback on your assignments’ etc.)
• Anything which requires or could be helped by asynchronous one-to-many communication

But the effectiveness to which you can do this stuff is HUGELY limited by the discussion board’s functionality. Say, for example, the discussion board doesn’t have inbuilt email functionality (it can’t operate as a listserv, you can subscribe & be subscribed to receive updates on particular threads / topics etc. - see groups.yahoo.com for an example of how this can work) then, well, you’ve lost an enormous capacity, the capacity to ‘push’ communication, and you’re relying on people to be ‘pulled’ to the area and well, I’ll tell you now, it ain’t going to happen!

Would it surprise you to learn that Blackboard & WebCT don’t, ahem, have this?

And even if they do get it… whatabout the learners… what exactly can you do with a posting on a discussion board… you don’t own it, you can’t fix where it goes, it probably doesn’t have an accessible unique URL or anchor, you probably can’t even include a picture or format your text how you’d like.

It’s pretty darn frustrating.

But there is light (of a sort) at the end of the tunnel (although I get the feeling it’s probably a different tunnel entirely!) Tools like weblogs and rss allow for all sorts of ways of expressing yourself and exploring other information. I can post, with ownership, to my own weblog. I can post, if I want, to other peoples. I can write it in an email, pop in a link & send it to my friends (bored ;o) and colleagues (tired ;o). I can get emails of updated weblogs, I can aggregate them using rss, I can visit them and explore. Pretty often I can get email or rss notification if someone replies to a comment I make or comments on a particular topic I want to follow. I can track comments made on my posts. I can post by email, sms, on or offline. I can write, talk or draw. I can make it look how I want. I can ‘advertise’ and share postings with ease. I can link into whatever I want.

Weblogs are push and pull. Weblogs are truly flexible and operable information communication technologies. Weblogs, yours and mine, I can use how the heck I like thankyousovery much!

Go off… check it out for yerself..

Some WebCT & Blackboard Discussion boards (you’ve gotta go through the whole authentication process)

A very simple, webloggy based discussion-board-esque communication setup at Userland’s Support area

My thoughts of some different possible uses of webloggy style communication (Personal and Collaborative Publishing) in an educational context.