The Voices of Our Students

In order to recenter online discussions in the voices of our students, we need to let them use their voices. Students are often left voiceless because of school rules or decisions that their teachers make for them. Effective discussions can take place when students are able to have opportunities to choose the topic or even create the questions for the discussion boards. 

It should not always be the responsibility of the students to plan for discussion boards, but they should be able to express themselves without feeling pressure of if their voice is right or wrong. While students should have the ability to express themselves, teachers need to set ground rules to ensure that the discussion is respectful even if students cannot agree with opinions. Discussions can become heated when students are going back and forth, but that is when the most learning takes place. Students are using their evidence and make more meaning out of it. 

Teachers should take on the role of moderators rather than creators. They should make sure that students are responding to one another, respectfully, and using evidence and vocabulary related to the content to answer the question. Teachers should not be going through each response and tearing them apart. The response of the student should not match the opinion of the teacher. Teachers should be using positive feedback to highlight the responsiveness of their students.  Students might not answer with enough evidence or respond enough to the boards, but teachers can change their response to that. Instead of saying, (insert student name), you are not responding enough and your work does not have enough proof, the teacher could say, (insert student name), I see that you are making efforts to complete your work, let's try adding more specific examples from the reading. Teachers could also address the issue of students not responding by saying, (insert student name), I see that you have posted a few times, but I would love to see more responses from you, you could try these articles that might interest you more to respond with. 

Students need their voices heard and supported by their teachers. Teachers have the ability to do this by giving them a place in their discussions. Teachers can lay the ground rules but leave the rest up to their students to continue the conversation through their discussion board.