Schoology Discussions Create Empowered Learners

In this blog post, I’d like to show you how and why I utilize the discussion feature built into Schoology as a way to help students elevate the level of their communication. I’ll also talk about how this student-led discussion is driven by the ideas behind ISTE standard 1 – Empowered Learner.

As a teacher, I have found that students elevate the level of their work when they know that someone other than their teacher is looking at what they’re doing. By making a student’s work visible to their peers, it gives them more incentive to really put in their best work. By bringing more eyes onto the final product, a student is working not only to get a good grade, but to establish status in a classroom in an empowering way.

 
ISTE standard 1 tells us that this process, of utilizing digital tools to help illuminate student work for a larger audience, is central to engaging students in our digital world. Standard 1 places a special emphasis on making sure that educators are meeting kids where they’re at, and empowering them from there.

An empowered learner is one who is taking an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating their competency on a topic. To me, this means that teachers are helping students engage with their peers in a way where they can contribute in a meaningful way. I have found that students sharing their expertise on a topic with their peers is an empowering experience for all.

For the student who is sharing their knowledge, they are demonstrating that they have learned something and are an expert on a topic. For the students receiving the knowledge, they now see clearly that they don’t need to go to their teacher for all the answers. Instead, their peers, whom they can relate to on an entirely different level, can play a vital role in helping them construct the knowledge that they need.

As a teacher, I purposefully assign work and engage students using the Schoology platform. The discussion feature built into Schoology is easy to use and helps illuminate student thoughts and broaden the audience for a piece of writing. With literally a few clicks of the mouse, you can create a forum where students are easily able to engage with their peers and empower each other along the way.

Creating a discussion on Schoology looks like this (3 Steps follow): 

Click “Add Materials”

Click “Add Discussion”

Enter into the dialog box the prompt for discussion as well as anything else you would like to add in terms of directions. (Also, here is where you can change the grading or when it is due). 

See example below: 

CONGRATULATIONS! You’re Done Setting It Up. 

Below is what it will look like as students begin posting: 

NOTICE THIS! Students can reply to posts by other students to further the discussion. 

Final Thoughts: When I did this earlier in the year, I saw from students that the writing that they were putting forth was significantly better than what they had previously shown to be the norm. I heard multiple students say that knowing that their peers were going to read their writing forced them to take more care with it. They also liked seeing that their peers had an opinion and some real knowledge about the topic!

At the end of this process there were undoubtedly questions in my head about how best to set this type of discussion up to ensure that students are engaging with the prompt in a way that maintains integrity. And clearly there are best practices that can be utilized to ensure that this happens. As that discussion inevitably opens a whole new can of worms, I think leave it here for now.

I hope that this has helped to demystify what a Schoology discussion looks like in practice and has given you an idea or two about how to incorporate the ideas behind ISTE standard 1 into your practice. Please reach out to me if you have any thoughts, questions, comments, or if you need help in any way!

You can see other posts from DLL Chris Bates here.