Discussion Forums

Discussions have become a core area for evaluating student activity and involvement, yet many tools have not matured to alleviate an instructor's administrative burden of managing and evaluating the quantity of material necessary. ANGEL Discussions were developed with unprecedented instructor input and feedback (over 100 user enhancement requests were incorporated in the product). New tools make it easier to manage large discussions and the hundreds of posts they contain. The result is a capability designed specifically for use in education that delivers many education-specific features.

Automated Evaluation of Student Activity

One of the most compelling features of ANGEL Discussions is its ability to help an instructor through scoring rubrics. ANGEL Discussions scoring rubrics allow the system to evaluate student behavior according to a set of rules established by the instructor.  These rubrics monitor and suggest a score based on a number of potential criteria including:

• The number of times a student posts a message
• Replies to a message
• The number of replies a student’s post generates from other students
• Average peer ranking students have received from their peers
• Average score a student has received from their instructor per-post

Scoring rubrics make it much easier for the instructor to evaluate the activity of students within a discussion.  All of the statistics are driven to a single page for review where the scores derived from the rubric can be posted to the Gradebook with a single click.

At a Glance Summary Reports

ANGEL Discussions also feature the “At a Glance” model inherent throughout the ANGEL LMS. A single page summarizes all discussion settings and student behavior patterns.  It also identifies the most and least active users, number of posts, highest and lowest rated posts, and other metrics. This one-page dashboard of critical usage and behavior data also provides the instructor the capability to drill down for more detailed information.

Instructional Flexibility

ANGEL Discussions allow instructors to configure the discussion forums in their courses to meet their specific educational requirements and personal preferences. Common pedagogical models for using discussions in the classroom are built in and can be selected from a simple pull down menu.  Built-in models include:

• User and team journal
• Post-first
• Hot seat
• Fishbowl

ANGEL Discussions also support multiple view modes and provide the option to switch between them.  Traditional “threaded” discussions are supported, as well as nested views that allow the user to view multiple (or all) messages simultaneously.

A wide range of discussion settings also offers instructors flexible configuration and management controls. Tools allow instructors to organize all course discussions in a single discussion instance, control default views, and assign moderator rights to anyone in the course.

Easy Access and Effective Management

Settings give you control over how discussions work.

ANGEL includes features to help instructors efficiently manage discussions. Powerful view and search filters allow both instructors and students to view and navigate through messages quickly.  Options include the ability to view and navigate through all posts, unread posts, read posts, my posts, replies to their posts, draft posts, flagged posts, or posts with attachments. Instructors can also quickly view and navigate through pending, approved, rejected, ungraded, graded, locked, or deleted posts.

ANGEL's view and search options also allow instructors to act on subsets of messages in batch.  Instructors can select single, multiple or all messages and in one operation approve, reject, score, move, make sticky, unstick, lock, mark as read or unread, delete or undelete. This feature saves a great deal of time managing messages in a large forum.

Additional tools make it easy for instructors to guide and manage discussions. Instructors can create messages in advance and have them automatically appear on the forum at pre-determined points in the class. This can help instructors drive conversations as well as save time managing the discussions. An inline “Quick Reply” option allows instructors to send short, private posts to users to provide guidance to students as they evaluate posts.

Improved Student Engagement

ANGEL Discussions make it simple to create an online environment that fosters enthusiastic student participation. Common pedagogical models for using discussions in the classroom are built in. A peer review option allows students to rank the value of other students’ posts in the forum, leading to more interactivity, greater student feedback and a greater feeling of “connectedness” among students.

The ability for instructors to create messages in advance and have them automatically appear on the forum at pre-determined points in the class can help drive conversations. And the inline “Quick Reply” option allows instructors to send short, private posts to help guide students’ participation.