Learning Through Course Room Postings  

Learners gather to share knowledge, formulate questions, examine practice, analyze findings, critique and thus refine conclusions, and challenge each other with new problems.   The online course room is a model of such discourse.  Since the discussion is asynchronous, meaning that contributions gather within the course room over the week, unconfined to a common time, participants can reflect and prepare, respond, and then refine their responses, building knowledge and stimulating reflection.  

The following are procedures you can follow – as a student or as a teacher- for building knowledge through online discussion in every course in which you participate.  It is also a way you can begin to track your thinking and your interests as you progress.  

At the start of each week, prepare a Word document for the next unit, based on the following steps.  

• Copy and paste learning objectives for the unit, and make additional notes on how you might accomplish these objectives.

• Review readings assigned and identify salient points

• Compose questions of your own that illuminate salient points

• Answer those questions in depth

• Answer the assigned discussion questions, incorporating what you have discovered in the above process.

Save this document, naming it by Course and Unit.  Cut and paste selected information from this document to the course room under the discussion thread to which it relates.  

• Sorting by "Date," so that you catch every posting, search for comments by colleagues that relate to what you've prepared, or provoke your thinking further.

• Craft responses to these learner comments, and copy and paste them to the course room under the appropriate thread.

• Sorting by "Date," search for class mates' comments that relate to the questions you developed in preparation for the unit.  Pose your questions as part of your response to those learners.

• Sorting by "Outline," watch for responses to your questions.

Copy and paste any posting by a learning colleague that adds to your reflections recorded for the week.  Be sure to note the date and the learner who wrote the posting.