I’ve been experimenting with problem-based learning for healthcare law and ethics and using online discussion boards as a replacement for classroom seminars. I presented on this at BILETA in Hertfordshire earlier this year (see paper), and more recently, I gave a paper at the Caledonian Academy on the feedback mechanism and the requirements for tutor input / involvement.
I only had a cohort of approx 45, but I split the class into groups of 6-7 and ran a series of 7 weekly problems over the second half of the semester. Each student was assigned a week for which they were responsible for creating a brief summary of the main issues that group was discussing. This then created a new forum for ‘summaries’ as each group had private discussions and could not read the boards of their classmates in other groups. This also allowed me to monitor this board more closely and leave the individual groups more to their own devices.
I could also leave private feedback for individual students on their summaries, and provide a public comment on the summary from each group, that can be seen by the whole class. Students would occasionally comment on this public feedback, but many were keen to get going with the next week’s problem.
Just to make sure that the students were familiar with discussion boards (most students hadn’t used them before, and were in level 3), the first weekly ‘problem’ was to discuss the Rules (Download discussion_rules.pdf) and agree on a top 3, or a bottom 3 – this way they had to read the rules! Everyone complied, but it was fun to see their views on what was important and what wasn’t so relevant… ‘Don’t post when intoxicated‘ was common in the top 3!
I’m working on a review of the student feedback on this trial, so what this space for an update! Also, let me know if you have any additions to the rules.
Michael