At some point–even prior to the start of COVID-19–most online instructors have relied on the ‘Post Once, Reply Twice’ formula for their online discussions. It is unclear where this formula originated, but like the Pot Roast Principle, there is no real reason we need to be bound by it. Discussions remain a pain point for most online instructors, so what can be done? How do we make our online discussions something students want to engage in? What alternatives exist?

To be completely honest, I think instructors need to start with their ‘why.’ Why do we have students do weekly discussions? For most of us, the ‘why’ likely has something to do with accountability. When we don’t see the students physically, we need some way of knowing that they are doing the readings and engaging with the coursework. Not having students in class every week makes it hard to feel that we have any control.

This is not a terrible ‘why,’ but it prompts this question: Are there other ways to achieve our goals that are authentic and engaging? As I have thought about this question, I’ve found a few alternatives to discussion boards:

• Q&A Polls: Consider having students post Questions using a Poll Everwhere Q&A activity. Require students to add questions they have around the weekly readings/activities. Other students can upvote questions, and the instructor can use these questions to create short follow-up videos to address questions that come up.
• Social Annotation: Use a social annotation tool like Hypothes.is, instead of threaded discussions, to have students reflect critically on readings.
• Quizzes: Think about using quizzes to check for understanding, but instead of just having students take the quiz, build them into your lecture. Have students answer a quick question and then follow it with a short video that explains the answer. This way, students get to practice and engage before they hear the lecture.

However, if you plan on continuing to use traditional discussion boards, think about how they are structured to provide the most interactive experience possible. Here are some strategies that can help make the experience less painful:

• Clarify expectations: Reward the type of participation you want to see. Build a rubric or a scoring structure that clearly indicates, through points or weighting, the type of engagement you are looking for from students.
  Offer options: Allow students to pick and choose how they participate. In your face-to-face discussions, not everyone participates in every class, nor do they participate in the same way, so replicating those choices in the structure of your online course discussions is optimal.
• Encourage collegiality: Create genuine opportunities for students to interact beyond just writing an essay. Things like role-playing, debate, and peer evaluation, encourage participation and engagement with each other.
• Use @ mentions: If you are using the D2L discussion model, you can use the tagging feature of @ mentions to encourage students to personalize their responses or intentionally draw students into the conversation.
• Keep being creative: Check out other discussion strategies we’ve talked about in the past. My colleague, Ashanti, wrote about this back in 2015, and the recommendations still stand true.

At the end of the day, as instructors, we need to perhaps re-think our ‘why’ by moving away from measuring accountability and moving towards community-building. I believe that when we do that, our online discussions will become richer and more engaging for both us and our students.