Although I have participated in online discussions for courses I have taken in the past, I never really felt that I understood how to effectively communicate in this very different kind of conversation. I was surfing the web for some ideas about online discussions and came across these ideas from Los Angeles Valley College website that I will think about as I participate in the book study discussion:
When you are posting a message to the discussion topic in general, click on "post reply" to that topic. When you are commenting on a particular post by a classmate, use the "quote" feature. When you want to start a new topic of conversation, click on "new topic."
To know when your response has received a comment from a classmate, before you click “submit,” check the box that says “notify me when a reply is posted.” You will be sent an email message to whatever email address you registered for the class with telling you that a reply has been posted. ETUDES also allows you to "watch" a topic and send you an email when new posts are submitted to it.
Here are some additional tips for creating good online discussions:
- Select a post that made you think, surprised you, that you learned something from, that you agreed with, that you disagreed with, that you had a question about, or that struck you in some way.
- Reply to a specific idea in a post rather than the whole post whenever possible. Use “quote” when you are directly commenting on a classmate’s post; use “post reply” when you are responding to the discussion topic as a whole.
- In most class discussions, you are allowed to disagree with each other’s perspective, but always be polite about it. Never post a message saying anything that you would not be willing to say to someone’s face. However, healthy intellectual disagreement is a good thing.
- Ask the original responder a question in your reply. You can ask for clarification, elaboration, or to apply the idea to a specific situation, and so on. Be sure to reply to any questions asked of you.
- Be yourself and have fun!.
- Don’t worry about trying to sound too smart, just focus on being engaged with the material and the thoughts of your classmates.
- Do edit and spell check your posts to make sure they are readable. However, we also need to be tolerant of each other’s typos :-).
- Remember the rule “Expect to be misunderstood.” It can be difficult to express your tone to others. Humor is especially hard to convey in writing. Use emoticons, such as smilies, whenever appropriate to help communicate your tone.
Source: http://www.lavc.edu/virtualvalley/ols/lesson_4_online_discussions.html