Importance of Peer Interactions in Higher Ed

Posted 02/15/2017 in Interactive Technology, Mobile Technology, Online Education

Where does online learning fall short? Why don’t discussion boards alone help cut it for online communication? What “piece” is missing in online education that could remove distance from distance learning? Something “Unnatural” about forced discussion boards What most educators have come to know is that student-to-student communication is vital to learning. Teachers know that proper discussion, reflection, and sharing of ideas between a class of students is necessary for a full understanding of material. But what happens when students are no longer between the same walls of a classroom? What happens when the miracle of technology has allowed students who ordinarily cannot obtain higher education, can now receive education through an online institution? The answer for many online courses is asynchronous communication. The majority of online courses require some sort of discussion board as the only requirement for peer-to-peer communication. The prompt typically goes as follows, “What are you thoughts on _____? Comment and respond to at least three other posts.” There’s something unnatural about forced commentary on another person’s view, especially when there’s no back-and-forth dialogue. US News Education talks about the experience that most have with online discussion boards, “each of us had to write one researched […]