MISCOMMUNICATION, PERSONAL ATTACKS AND TROLLING
Adding a discussion component to your face-to-face or eLearning class is a great way to measure learning. The depth of a question can tell you plenty about where your students are along the learning spectrum. Having peer-to-peer discussions is also a great way to illustrate that students are part of the learning process and should not expect all of the answers to come directly from you. If you are thinking of adding discussions to your class, there are a few areas of concern that you should be prepared for and Anastasia Salter has written an article to help you out. She writes, "I’ve been teaching a large online class for the first time this semester, and as the course involves looking at a number of challenge interactive works and games I put a lot of emphasis on discussion forums and critical debate. However, discussion forums of this kind present a lot of potential problems in an online class. We only have to read the comments anywhere on the web (pro tip: don’t actually read the comments) to see that the online medium offers huge potential for miscommunication, personal attacks, trolling, and harassment–even when in the space of a virtual classroom." To see her tips click here. 

THE PAIN OF AWKWARD SILENCE
Dr. Kenneth L. Parker, Steber Professor in Theological Studies at St. Louis University, has an interesting post today about asking students questions. He writes, "At the beginning of each academic year, I have to relearn the same lesson: enduring the awkward silence after a question has been asked. At the start of my career this “skill” seemed unendurable. It felt far easier to fill the empty void of fifty or seventy-five minutes—or God forbid, two and a half hours—with the sound of my own voice and well chosen words recorded on paper. After all, students are conditioned to expect that of my guild. Yet as I began to take more seriously the need to create learner-centered classroom experiences, one of the first steps to achieve that goal proved to be silencing my own voice, and waiting for students to find theirs. Continue reading

IS PESSIMISM HURTING STUDENT SUCCESS
Some of your students may be falling behind because they suffer from a negative disposition. Dr. Travis Bradberry provides us with interventions that can help create student success through positivity. He writes, "When faced with setbacks and challenges, we’ve all received the well-meaning advice to “stay positive.” The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and unrealistic. It’s hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well back when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings." Continue reading