Linette Garcia | Staff Writer
I dread seeing the Canvas notification saying my professor added a new discussion board assignment. I don’t think I have another “Hello! Great job on your discussion post” in me.
For those of us who are chained to online education, discussion boards are slowly ruining our lives with unnecessary tasks.
Our professors can assign as many discussion boards as they want, but this doesn’t mean students will actually engage with one another.
Learning is a personal concept that everyone has, so what works for one person, doesn’t work for another. In my case, discussion boards are a hit-or-miss.
In my two years as an online student at FIU, discussion boards have consumed most of my time. Every professor sends us at least one discussion board a week, and whenever I look at it, I can’t help but wonder what’s the point of doing them.
The intention of these Canvas discussions is to be an interactive online forum. But most of us see it as meeting a word count to get an easy A. However, this depends on how the professor sets up their discussion boards.
Replying to three peers with no guidelines but to be “thoughtful” and meet a set word count isn’t teaching us much. When I scroll through the responses, I see that everyone uses the same introduction and regurgitates the same opinion.
Don’t get me wrong, discussion boards help us give us those extra few points we need or get feedback on bigger assignments, but the cons outweigh the pros.
Discussion boards create a vacuum for a narrow conversation pattern. We’re inevitably pressured to agree or disagree with someone’s perspective, and our understanding of the class material is limited to long paragraphs.
Discussion posts are not genuine interactions between classmates but forced civility with hollow discourse. Overall, we do not need discussion boards to learn the class subject, and they’re easily replaceable with more lively assignments.
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The opinions presented on this page do not represent the views of the PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect the perspectives of contributing writers and/or university community members.
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