Discussion Boards in Any Modality

Why Discussion Boards?
​Discussion Boards can significantly enhance academic engagement with content and social collaboration with classmates and faculty. Well-designed discussion boards provide:

• opportunities for EVERY student to engage and participate
• time to read, think, reflect and develop responses
• formative and summative assessments
• a variety of ways for students to demonstrate learning
• individualized and direct feedback from peers and faculty

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8 Discussion Board Ideas
When creating the discussion board, always start with the learning goal connected to course competencies and objectives. With a little bit of innovation and creativity, discussion boards can be engaging and take your course to a whole new level. A well developed question, problem or prompt is critical!

Problem & Solution
Pose a content-based problem and have students generate creative or evidence based solutions.

Collaborative Class Slide Deck
Have each student contribute a content slide to a class deck.

​Current Events
Connect students to local and global real-world events to make connections.

Image Collection(with or without text)
Ask students to post an image, which can inspire creativity, provide visual representation, promote diversity of perspective and artistry. *Note -also a great opportunity to discuss image licenses with students. (Pixabay and Unsplash)

Video Review
Have students watch a content related video and respond to reflective questions.

Virtual Field Trips
Post a link for students to visit and explore. Students report back findings and discoveries. Example: Interactive Virtual Field Trips - Discovery Education

Small Groups
Split the whole class into smaller group discussions, allow students to, connect and collaborate with 3-5 classmates. How do I create a group discussion in a course?

​Video Reply
Have students create a video response to prompt, question, or challenge. (Animoto and Flipgrid)


For more great ideas on how to utilize Discussion Boards, check out this collection of Faculty Focus articles!

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Don't Forget Our New Discussion Tool Ed. Discussion!
Instructors are using Ed Discussion for class Q&A with great success and have found it saves considerable time for teaching staff, reduces emails, and increases student engagement and peer learning.

It's quick and easy to start using Ed Discussion and integrates seamlessly with Canvas.

Contact the CTLA at [email protected] for more details or help getting started

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Share your ideas
If you have other creative ways to utilize Discussions, and or If you would like to be a CTLA Tech Tuesday guest blogger, please let us know at: [email protected].

Your Faculty Liaisons, Jen & Vanessa