Busy work versus meaningful dialogue
According to Boettcher and Conrad (pg.84), “The purpose of discussion boards or forums in an online course is similar to planned discussions in a classroom-based course, only much more so.” It is the place where students form a community or bond at the same times as they are processing content, sharing ideas, challenging opinions. and nudging each other to delve deeper into topics. An online course comes alive in the discussion forum where students can be expressive and often make connections (those “Ah Ha” moments). So much of an online course is accomplished alone, even active portions like quizzes and written assignments, that discussion becomes more important online than in the classroom. Discussions, if properly crafted, require all learners to participate and give all learners a chance to reflect on the ideas in the content resources or the ideas of other students.
In professional schools discussion often is a way of encouraging students in one narrow specialty (eg. neonatal nurse practitioners) to relate to others (eg. health informaticists). Often, it is only when students are responding to a questions or to another student’s ideas that they begin to know what they think or know, or more importantly, what they don’t know. Discussion boards provide a time and area to explore collaboratively and develop shared values.
Asynchronous
Online courses permit interactions across the barriers of time and distance. Asynchronous interactions, as contrasted with chat or audio-or video-conferencing environments, are generally in written form and are read by participants at times suitable to them. Often a record of past asynchronous dialogue is available for view from an archive. Ideas from postings that are days, weeks or even months old can rekindle new dialogue if they are seen as relevant by participants or the moderator. Most often, the moderator is a faculty member or instructor of a course but some discussions may be strategically moderated by students. Traditional discussion start with a posting by faculty.
Thread/ Threaded Discussion
Threaded discussion refers to an asynchronous method of communicating in which new entries or postings to a discussion are listed and indented below the original post. Postings/comments to comments are indented again. A thread refers to the full list of comments, including the original post and all the comments participants made to it. A discussion may feature multiple threads.
You may be wondering what is an unthreaded discussion? Email is the most common unthreaded discussion mechanism although many email systems do display original
emails and replies in a list. Most often, unthreaded discussion simply appear as a list of postings without any hierarchy related to date or time of the posting.
Examples of original faculty postings to begin an asynchronous discussion – One distinction between online discussion question and class discussion questions is that the instructor generally plans the online discussion in more detail with more specific goals in mind. It is difficult and disruptive to modify a posted question once a discussion has begun. Original questions should be designed to elicit engagement, reflection and community.
EXAMPLES
Discussion 1: After watching “200 Countries, 200 Years in 4 minutes” by Hans Rosling
Discuss
- Three things that surprised you
- Two new questions that you have after watching the presentation and completing this week’s readings
- Life expectancy in the populations you see in your clinical practice (this means that you must define these populations for us) watch a YouTube video
Discussion 2: Discuss the relevance of the Kaiser Health Policy updates to
- your practice;
- your profession;
- you personally. Describe synergies between population health readings and the policy readings. Support your comments with examples from articles, cartoons, and other materials.
Discussion 3: US Federal Budget: mandatory versus discretionary spending on population health.
- What is “mandatory spending” and why is it a key component of the US budget deficit?
- What percent of the Federal budget is spent on mandatory population-based health programs?
- What is included in discretionary spending? What percent of the US federal budget is spent on discretionary population health programs? (Hint: SCHIP)
How might you know if a particular site is politically biased?
Discussion 4: Discuss the economics of three health conditions. Each student should provide new or additional material and thoughtful comments about one condition. The group should strive to discuss all three conditions.
- Discuss:
- The opportunity costs of diabetes, atrial fibrillation or pre-maturity
- Cost shifting related to these illnesses: is it limited to health care costs?
- What sort of social capital costs are associated with these conditions?
- How does information asymmetry increase the costs of these conditions…or does it?
- Do nurses have an impact on the economic cost of conditions such as these? How?
