Announcements

Good morning everyone,

I have really been enjoying the discussion and sharing happening so far in the Sharing forum (as well as Open forum) and would like to welcome any "late arrivers" who just joined us or have been observing and may yet still dip their toes in our discussion prompt water. As a bonus it has been really interesting to get a little glimpse of the variety of contexts that you work in with your students.

Here are some of the great ideas surfacing about effective discussion prompts:

• Using discussion prompts online between face to face classes
• Asking students to make a choice between two options/take sides on an issue
• Asking students to discuss the 'worst result' first (and later what they would do to help avoid that)
• Using discussion prompts to help students draw from their own experience
• Putting students in teams to work together and discuss
  
• Discussion prompts that ask students to "creatively share" - for example, using drawing or painting or another medium
• Prompts that invite students to incorporate photos or other multimedia (hello giant emoticon! just kidding)
  
• Discussion prompts for the purpose of giving students practice in writing their opinions
• Prompts that encourage students to share all their ideas and refrain from judging others' ideas (to help students get comfortable with sharing with others - especially online!)
• Asking students to imagine themselves in a situation
• Prompts that focus on creating positive change
• Prompts that help instructors/facilitators put themselves in the shoes of their students and where they are at