In a way, this issue overlaps with Kyle’s post on tablets and Barara’s post on RSS feeds, hashtags and course content, but I’m interested in how to use technology to help facilitate both synchronous in-class and asynchronous outside-classroom discussion. Partly I am inspired by this Profhacker post about the various tools or strategies you can use for synchronous and asynchronous class discussion: http://goo.gl/XZzc8
I use Moodle for a lot of course content and it would be a great place to encourage student discussion, but the students are not encouraged by Moodle’s less-than-thrilling interface, so I have to use blogs, Twitter and Facebook.
I like this topic – there are so many issues involved in drawing students into asynchronous discussion. How do you get authentic engagement? How do you grade it? What are the issues involved in making this work public? How does it fit into what you’re trying to do when teaching writing? How do you support tech-averse students without making it all about the platform? etc. etc.
PS: there’s an interesting piece in the Wired Campus Chronicle blog on asynchronous discussions.