Cherish Lake | Staff Writer
Discussion boards get a bad reputation, but we need them.
Discussion boards allow for students to engage in meaningful conversations surrounding their class while also sharing their thoughts on the material.
For anyone who has taken an online-only class, there aren’t many chances for us to talk with our peers outside of the class group chat. Discussion boards are one of the few platforms we have to essentially discuss with our peers when we are limited to a screen.
It’s also a great way for professors to connect with their students. Through submission comments, teachers are able to provide feedback for students and give notes on their work.
Understandably, discussion posts can feel like busy work sometimes. But at most they take an hour to finish and is a relatively easy A compared to other assignments.
And completing peer responses is not that hard. It gives us the opportunity to learn a bit more about my classmates while thinking about the topic in a different way.
When I do a discussion post for a class related to my major, I’m excited to have meaningful discussions about it.
In one of my courses we have discussion posts each week and this week’s topic is about making innovative menu choices. A classmate wrote about how online menus are more elegant and convenient than physical menus and I respectfully disagreed. This topic fostered discussions about something as simple as menu designs, yet it was still made interesting because of the disagreements or agreements people had.
Disliking discussion boards is one thing, but not wanting to engage with the topic is another. Without discussion boards, many of us would be deprived of a community.
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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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