CES: Using the GROUPS feature for Discussion Boards

Joe Pullia, 5th grade teacher at CES, conducted a unit of study with his students on the Newbery Award. He chose to use the Discussion Board tool in Blackboard as a way to motivate students to have "conversations" about five books that received the Newbery Medal. Utilizing the Manage Groups feature in Blackboard [Control Panel/User management/Manage Groups], student groups were created.
The 5 groups were set up to include their own discussion board with specific students enrolled in each group. When a new button was set up for the groups a Tool Link was added, with the tool type being Groups.
Mr. Pullia noted that the discussion boards have motivated students to write more, share more, and go deeper into various issues and characters in the book. He said that that one huge advantage of the groups feature is the ability to differentiate instruction, since a group can be created for even a single student. Janna Bell, assistant principal, has been included as part of the discussion groups and often responds to posts and asks questions to promote dialog.

Here is a sample section of one books discussion with student names erased (click on image for larger view):
One student said that she really enjoys using discussion boards and especially the Newbery discussion board because she can "talk" with her classmates even when she is home. She said that she gets some ideas about the book that she didn't even think about, and she gives other kids new ideas about the book too!

The GROUPS tool adds another way to manage discussion boards and provides a system for supporting differentiated instruction.

Promote Peer Review of Writing Through Discussion Boards in Blackboard

Amy DeCeault, 3rd grade teacher, and Sally Wanamaker, technology teacher, worked together at GFS to set up a discussion board on Blackboard. Through this interactive writing process, students are able to share their writing and gain constructive feedback from their peers.

A topic was created for the discussion board on the classroom page, making sure to leave "allow attachments" unchecked. Students posted a request on the discussion board asking their peers to give feedback on a certain aspect of their story (ie "I would like feedback on my main character" or "I would like to hear what you think about the problem in my story" or "What did you think of my setting?" or, as in the example below, "I want feedback on dialogue and my characters."). They then attached their writing pieces created in Word to the discussion board message.

Once the students each posted their own story, they opened one of their classmates' posts, read the request, opened the attachment and read the story. They then replied to the author's initial posting and responded to the request for feedback. (If they had time they went to other posts and responded.) The authors also had a chance to read the feedback, comment on it and/or ask questions. This created very effective dialogue between the students.

The student's also learned quite a few new ITL skills including adding threads to the discussion board, browsing to upload attachments, downloading the attachments
of others (and understanding why if they make a change to their peers' story it doesn't change the original in their peers' Y drive!), and replying to discussion board messages.

As with all of the postings in this BLOG, please feel free to contact the teachers for more information.