LibGuides: For Faculty: Online Teaching: Digital Discussions, Feedback Sessions, &amp; Critiques

Tools for Digital Discussions, Feedback Sessions, Critiques...

You can use these tools for asynchronous discussions and feedback sessions, to augment and/or replace face-to-face versions of these activities.

Canvas Discussion
Create a Canvas Discussion that allows your students to respond to a prompt and/or to one another. You can have students post their work to receive feedback from peers. Discussions may be graded or ungraded.
Google Jamboard
Enrich your lesson plans and open up new ways for your students to collaborate with tips, tricks, and resources for Jamboard (the whiteboard included with Google Drive).
Padlet
Use Padlet as a digital bulletin board: students can add short text responses and images, and they can comment on each other's posts. This is a great way to get responses to a particular question, and a fun way virtually check in with students and see how they're doing.
Google Docs Suggestion Mode
Google Docs' Suggestion mode, like Microsoft's Track Changes, allows viewers to make suggestions and edits, as well as add comments, to a piece of writing: you can encourage your students to use it to virtually edit each other's work.
Canvas Peer Review Assignment
You can use Canvas's Peer Review Assignment feature to allow students to give feedback to one another on their submissions. Peer reviews can be assigned automatically by Canvas, and can be anonymous.

Asynchronous Online Discussion Strategies
From University of Central Florida's Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository, information about effective discussion prompts.
Sample Discussion Board Questions that Work This four-page document from McMurry University explains seven approaches to discussion prompts. Each includes a one-paragraph rationale and an example.
Questions to Keep Discussions Going, from Stephen Brookfield, Discussion as a way of teaching (see pgs. 43 and 44)
From UC Boulder: Discussion Board Guidelines (for students)

From the University of Rhode Island, here's an article about Best Practices in Managing Online Discussions. Several of the tips are from student surveys and focus groups.
From Educause, 10 Tips for Effective Online Discussions.
From Inside Higher Ed, an article that discusses new approaches to online discussions.
From The Discussion Project, Online Discussion Tips (includes a sample to kickstart your thinking around online discussion norms and working agreements to undergird discussions).

All of these articles agree that instructors need to:

be present in the discussion boards
let students lead the discussion but be sure to clarify, redirect, encourage, and deepen the discussions
model to students how they want them to engage and collaborate in the community