Trying to find a way of encouraging students to write and critique literature reviews. So I looked at whether using a discussion board could be used. I 'borrowed' the idea from a short course on Moderating On-Line Groups (now CLEO) run by the Institute of Learning and Teaching Higher Education, University of Northampton.
What was the exercise they had to do?
What was the exercise they had to do?
- Post a small literature review
of up to three papers on start of project idea.
- post it on a discussion board on the Backboard module
- rules they
- had to post the mini review of the discussion board with appropriate references
- had to post the mini review of the discussion board with appropriate references
-
had to comment on at least one post.
- were encouraged a week later to post a mindmap of the project.
Context
- small group (<10>
- MSc students
Initial Observations
- 3 weeks after it started posts are still
appearing.
- most students have comment on most of the
initial literature reviews.
- 46 posts only 11 of them are from me, this included one where I post an example.
- Student comments vary from being mainly
supportive to appropriately critical making some suggestions
Some thoughts
- It seems to be received by the student so far positively.
- The fact that it is small group who know each other is
probably helping.
- Comments also included ones saying that it helped others
understand a little clear what the other person's project is about, overall comments are usually clearly written and supportive of each other even when making critical
suggestions.
-will it have an impact on proposal and
final dissertation is unknown.
