Here’s one of the things I like best about teaching online: everybody has a
voice, and everybody gets a response.

That’s not a new idea; a lot of people, including me, have thought and
written about this for years.

But in thinking about online teaching this morning as part of my daily
love/hate meditation about Canvas, this is what struck me:

When students write in the Discussion Board, and you respond to them with
encouraging comments and questions, it’s the only place where that specific
kind of interaction happens.

Think about it: in a face-to-face class, you have the dynamic
of calling on students who raise their hands while encouraging those who don’t
to participate. Often you can do this through various kinds of class exercises,
but one technique could be somewhat stressful for students: calling on them to
answer a question that you’ve asked.

Sometimes this gives them a chance to shine, especially if
you can see that they have something to say but seem to be holding back. In-person
teaching is an exercise in constantly reading the room, looking to see how you
can engage everyone, so this can work. But what if the student is tired, not
feeling well, didn’t read the assignment, or is otherwise giving off signals
about not being called on? And what if this happens a lot, so you can’t draw
them out?

In a Discussion Board, though, the students’ thoughts are already
there. You don’t have to put them on the spot. You can just listen and then reply—not
with a grade, or criticism, but with encouragement and specificity. I can’t
respond to everyone every week, but I can systematically reply to everyone over the course of two weeks.

What I like about responding in the Discussion Board is that
there’s no upvoting (I guess Canvas has this—whoever knows with Canvas?—but it’s
not turned on) and that this is spontaneous; I’m writing with my voice rather
than with teacher voice.

WSU’s Global Campus, which runs all the online classes, mandates
that everything except student office hours is asynchronous—that is, I can’t do
lectures or hold any sort of group meetings. Yet there’s an immediacy to responding
in the Discussion Board that approximates what happens in a face-to-face class.

This is extra work, in a way; the Discussion Board posts
still have to be assigned points at the end. I still think it’s worth it.