Advanced Discussion Tool Features

When: Thursday, 2:30
Where: B&O railroad. 2nd floor
What: The pedagogy DG will hold a F2F Discussion about features for the advanced discussion tool from the perspective of those who want a tool to support teaching and learning.

Who: (add your name to the list below)

1. Charles Kerns
2. Stephen Marquard
3. Dave Ross
4. Mike Osterman
5. John Norman
6. Tim Altom

Preliminary manifesto from Charles Kerns:

Our discussion about online discussion tools brought out several issues for me:

1) There are many features that add to the usability of a general discussion tool and are common. These we have come to expect. Usability experts will identify these features in any requirements gathering process. They were mentioned in some of the postings

2) There are some new and uncommon features that may add to usability of a general discussion tool. For example, the graphic views of discussions that were described in the U of Mich review are examples of these types of features. This type of feature may or may not be identified in a general requirements gathering process. These features help with general usability problems (where am I, what can I do, what has happened recently, what is this a part of, etc.)

3) There are specialized features that add to the learning and teaching experience. They are not common in discussion tools. A requirements gathering process may not identify them. They are often linked to special functions that are needed in using discussion in on-line learning. Some
examples:

---for creating learning communities, special features that support synthesizing student postings by a facilitator, with links back into multiple postings (possibly from different threads) is useful.

---for supporting critical thinking and argumentation, a structure beyond threads, postings, and replies can be useful. This may include semantic tagging of postings to show each's relation to prior postings (e.g., evidence in support of, evidence against, etc.)

---for collaborative knowledge building, a collaborative concept map view of an argument that can be generated automatically using semantic tagging. It also can include scaffolded by providing sentance openers for postings such as "Can you give an example of ______", "Can you describe a typical _______", "What can you infer about _____"

---for typical teaching activities, methods to easily view one students contributions, but within the context of prior postings, to make grading easier.

---for typical teaching activities, methods to assign roles to students and structure activities (such as assign student facilitators that change
weekly) LAMS types of activities.

I think the pedagogy dg can really help the Sakai tool teams in issue number 3) above.

The people who understand these functions are the teaching and learning teams/centers at the campuses. I hope we can have more involvement from these groups in the future. It would be great if some can come to the BOF session.