By Jayne Finlay
A case study from the Information School at the University of Sheffield
The Library and Information Services Management (LISM) programme is one of the few distance learning programmes delivered at the University of Sheffield. It is designed for students who are working in a library and information services environment who wish to progress their career by undertaking a professional qualification. While staff deliver weekly live online lectures, most of the teaching and learning activities take place asynchronously, allowing students to participate in activities and discussions at their own pace and at a time that suits them.
Online discussion forums are therefore a core part of the LISM programme, as they offer an opportunity for students to engage with both peers and tutors about what they are learning and other relevant professional issues. As many students are unable to attend the live lectures, this is one of the main ways of interacting with each other on the programme. We use Google Spaces to facilitate these interactions.
TUoS offers guidance for online communication. While this guidance is helpful, it is aimed primarily at on-campus students who have other opportunities to engage with peers face-to-face during the week. Our programme team felt it was important to create more tailored guidance for our distance learning students.
We were keen for the development of these guidelines to be student-led, and asked current LISM students to offer suggested guidelines for creating a safe and inclusive online discussion forum, as well as offering their ‘top tips’ to get the most out of their online discussions. The first draft of guidelines created by students was then shared with the LISM programme team for further input and suggestions. The final draft was shared with LISM students who had the opportunity to raise questions or provide further feedback about the guidelines.
The final guidelines and ‘top tips’ are listed below. You can see that their emphasis is on ensuring contributions are respectful of other members in the Space and constructive in their approach.
Guidelines:
- Be mindful of word choice and tone when posting - ensure your comments are clear and cannot be taken out of context
- Avoid being dismissive of other people’s opinions. Instead, express alternative points of view respectfully. It can be good to debate a topic, as long as this is done respectfully.
- Be supportive of students’ posts and provide constructive feedback which aims to improve reasoning and the overall conversation, rather than criticising opinions.
- Discussions should centre on the academic topic being discussed, or other issues relevant and interesting to your classmates on the programme.
- If you have an individual concern with a particular module, programme or tutor, it is polite and good practice first to email module / programme coordinators, personal tutors, student reps or the student support team (rather than raising it in a public forum). Please think about whether it is an issue that needs to be shared with everyone.
- While it is important to contribute to discussion, make sure to leave space for others to contribute as well.
- Keep your comments short and try to stick to one topic or argument at a time.
- It is easy to experience frustration when we are mostly interacting with people online and asynchronously. Remember to respect people’s efforts in communicating in this way, give people the benefit of the doubt and follow the guidelines above to create an environment in which everyone feels safe and comfortable to participate.
- Check if someone else has already expressed your opinion and if so, react to their comment instead of making duplicate arguments. Otherwise it will become difficult for other students to navigate the amount of information that is posted.
- It is ok to ‘lurk’ and read other’s comments before writing your own reply.
- Do comment on others’ posts - it is particularly encouraging for students when they have written their first post or reply to receive a positive comment back.
- Use links or pictures to illustrate and to make your post more engaging.
- Read over your post a couple of times before you press ‘send’, especially if you feel strong emotions when writing a comment.
- When posting a comment, try to make it clear what response or input you are looking for in order to aid online discussion - this will lead to better discourse.
- Long posts can be off-putting for other students who may lack confidence in posting - try to keep your posts focused and not too unwieldy.