Discussion Board

Benefits of Discussion Board:

One of the great benefits of discussion board is people get all the necessary information related to a particular topic in one place. For example, if I am interested to go Hawaii for a trip and looking for relevant information related to the trip, I might be able to get all the necessary information from a discussion board.

I usually do it so often; when I am looking for something specific, in stead of wandering around on the net, I simply go to a discussion forum and read the relevant posting from different users. Few days ago, I was looking for a calling feature that will allow me to call free back home. I found a discussion forum that is dedicated to VoIP discussion only. It was amazing to see how actively people were sharing their knowledge and findings with other people. Finally, I learned many new things about VoIP calling features and found different softwares that allowed me to call back home either free or at a very low cost.

Moreover, I also found discussion board very useful to share ideas and knowledge. This works very well for online courses, where a teacher will work more like a facilitator and students will be teaching each other.

Discussion Board in class settings:

I have been talking about creating a discussion board from the beginning of the class. Discussion board is a part of online learning and could be used as an effective tool for learning. For example, the way we are using blogs to allow students to participate with each other, the same way a discussion board can be used. Forums are more effective sometimes, since there are moderators and administrators to control the board. Therefore, anything a user will write will be on hold for moderators’ approval for posting (the settings can be changed though). Moreover, unlike blog it does not have personal space for every user with sub domains; rather it is a board where discussions take place at the same time and anyone can participate in the discussions at anytime. So for a class setting, a topic can be raised in every week for discussion and students will be allowed to actively participate on it. This way a teacher can also determine the level of participation by students, and compare the quality of postings among students.

The role of discussion board in business-

It is very important to get appropriate feedback when we start a new business. Let me give you a particular example. Recently I have started a web business and developed a community portal. The first step was to buy some software to develop some web features on my website and to buy a domain with space. I was searching at google to find out which hosting company is giving the most attractive deal. However, I wasn’t able to find out the quality of hosting, since companies never sell themselves short. I was well aware of different marketing strategies, and was selective in picking up a hosting company. Finally I found a discussion board, where users have shared their experience with different hosting companies, talked about the good and bad sides, and recommended based on their experience. It really helped me to decide which hosting should be a good fit for my business.

However, we should be very careful while making a decision. If we make a decision based on what other people are saying, it could be misleading. Sometimes, you will find people from the company participating in the discussion board to influence you. They will be acting as users of that product and will give you false feedback. Other than that, I would say discussion board is an excellent place for business people to learn and share their knowledge. It also works as a point where you can meet new people, increase your networking and take the opportunity to flourish your business.

What if there wasn’t a search engine like google?

Post your response-

Have you guys ever thought about working on internet without google? I am not sure how many of you have the internet fever; I do.

I can’t think of spending a single day without being online. I have to use internet at least once a day and I click on google more than once within that time. Anyway, my intention for this posting is to talk about google search engine. Assuming you guys are also like me and spend an hour (on average) daily using the internet. As long as we are in school, we have to access online at least for study purpose. Think about it! How many times in a day we click on google? How many times you do it in a month? Have you ever counted how many times you have done it since its inception? It might be countless.

I am going to throw this question in google doc so that you can participate. I believe this is a very interesting question. It would have been really hard for me to do necessary research for my school projects and assignments if google wasn’t there. Just write one or two sentence in the google doc saying about what you think if there wasn’t any search engine called google (assuming there was no other search engine like google). This document has already been posted on google doc as a shared document. Once everyone finishes writing their response, I will post this on my blog. Stay tuned!

I am starting by writing one line below; your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Nayeem: I believe there isn’t anyone on the web who never heard of ‘Google.’

Starting with your name, please type one or two sentences below-

Online Assessment

After reading the article, Designing online assessment of student learning, written by Segrave. S. & Rice, M., I had now an in depth idea about how the online assessment work for students, how that can be developed, and why it is beneficial to students.

For online courses, particularly, blog, forum, google docs, and WebCT type of online gateway can be used as online assessment tools. I don’t support using just one of the above. All of the above tools have some sort of drawbacks, which can be overcome if multiple tools are used for online assessment. Google doc is an excellent way to share documents with group. I was playing with the links that Lorraine sent us for making free online tests (http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx). I have created an IQ test and post that to google docs and decided to share it with the class.

Some of the drawback that I was talking about is as follows-

Blogging: You will find students posting artificial comments just for the sake of course work. Moreover, you don’t have a real time option in blog where you could post a document and that can be accessed and edited by different users at the same time (like google doc). For example, if teachers want to test their students, they cannot post questions that can be answered and submitted to teachers using blog, we need a different system.

WebCT: Although WebCT does not have such problem, testing students with exams is not the only way to assess. WebCT does not have the huge and open discussion facility like blogs and forums. Therefore, it is suitable to use for exam purpose only.

Forum: It is a little upgraded version of blog, I would say. As a member of the forum you can participate in any open discussion and post word documents, pictures, video as an attachment for other member to download. Moreover, embedding multimedia facility is also there. However, for test purposes or for shared documents, forum is still behind.

Google Doc: This is a recent creation of google, and I really like this tool. This is an excellent tool for online assessment. You can post your test paper and share it with a group. You also have an option to see who is editing what so that you can always be on the loop when you share a document through google doc.

Since assessment plays an important role in determining the quality of students’ learning, it is very important to have a solid, accurate, and fair assessment system. Therefore, I would suggest using all or some of the above tools to make the entire assessment process more productive and efficient.