But who is this "we"? you ask. We're students in a graduate seminar about teaching and technology. This discussion is occasioned by a particular graduate student's class presentation.
That being said, don't mind the rest of the blog. You can wander around, but it won't make much sense. The only reason that this discussion is taking place on this blog is so that the students in the graduate class can get a sense of what Disqus--the application that will be facilitating the conversation--would look like on a blog, that is, in case a graduate student wanted to build a course on a blog, rather than an institutionally-sponsored LMS. You've seen these kind of courses before.
You don't have to have an account with Disqus in order to particulate. And while you can sign in with Twitter or Facebook, you can post anonymously if you wish. That's part of the fun (hopefully)!
Cool. Now that I've said that, we can get to the discussion. For this activity, the goal is to engage in a discussion. That discussion will stem from a reading of a passage from Morris and Stommel.
Here's the Morris and Stommel. The passage is taken from the section "The Discussion Forum is Dead; Long Live the Discussion Forum":
We argue in “Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It,” that building community is at the heart of learning, whether on-ground, online, or hybrid. Some tools allow for more flexibility in this than others. Any digital tool can be used well or misused, depending on its application. With rare exception, software applications are neutral parties to their use. Even the ugliest of educational technology can be hacked to good ends, and most of it has been created with the best intentions. Every tool, though, demands imagination and critical investigation. Discussion forums are the sort of ed tech you hope creative teachers will hack mercilessly, creating in their place a means through which students and teachers can interact in substantive, relevant ways. The forum itself does not automatically promote meaningful conversation — or conversation at all, unless conversation can be reduced to monotone interjections by its participants — but that does not mean good things can’t happen there. In truth, discussion forums have the same potential all digital pedagogy tools have. In the right hands, wonders occur.
[...]
Thomas P. Kasulis writes in “Questioning”:
A discussion is not only the process of collectively examining a set of issues; it is also the persons involved in that task . . . To prepare for a class discussion without taking into consideration the personalities, strengths, and needs of the people in the course is to depersonalize teaching. It is to teach the course and not the students.
In the room with our students, we can know if they’re engaged and participating, even as each of them participates in his or her own unique fashion. In an online discussion forum, it’s difficult to observe such nuance, and impossible to quantitatively evaluate it. Still, teachers working inside the pedantic confines of an LMS and its discussion forum usually acquiesce to its obsolescence. Rather than hacking the system to fit our pedagogy, we can easily become the teachers the LMS wants us to be, which quickly feels less like teaching and a lot more like data entry. (Urgency, n. pg)
From this passage, I want to dwell on the idea of hacking the genre/medium of discussion form. Together, as a group, I want us to ask questions like:
- How can we hack the discussion forum?
- Why does the discussion forum need to be hacked? (Or why does any educational technology need to be hacked, for that matter?)
- How have you hacked the discussion forum in the past?
- How could the discussion forum be hacked, specifically in a password-protected LMS? that is, without breaking FERPA?
- And what about Disqus? How could we hack that application? or is that technology already itself a hack? I know you haven't worked with the application before--just speculate.
As we have this conversation online, I'd like to invite you to invite others from your personal networks to join us. You don't have to, but, if you feel comfortable, send out an invitation on Twitter or Facebook. Hell, maybe even Jesse Stommel will want to join in.
Remember, that's a major advantage of this application, namely, that it enables what Morris and Stommel refer to as "Rampant online discussion" (Urgency, n. pg). Unlike a discussion forum in a password-protected LMS, a discussion on Disqus at least has the capacity to go viral. And, in fact, that's the purpose of what we're doing here today.
All in all, I don't expect anyone to visit us today (2/26/20). But maybe s/he will visit us in the future. I'll check back occasionally, and see if anyone has commented.
To be clear:
What are we doing?
You're trying to engage others in a conversation about how to hack a discussion forum. Feel free to use memes/gifs, and please reach out to others on social media--if you feel so inclined.
How are we doing it?
By selecting a bullet point from the list above to post on, or by responding to another student's post.
What order do I do it in?
I would jot down a few ideas first, think of what you want to contribute to the discussion intellectually first, and so on. Then, after that, I would try to respond to others' posts, or playfully engage with others on the application. However, because I believing in hacking my own assignments, do note that you could just as easily begin by doing nothing. You could just pretend you're doing something, then, only after someone has posted, you could develop that person's thought future. Or you could just heckle them anonymously. Disqus affords that possibility too--if the moderator allows it.
What is the purpose of the activity?
To learn what Disqus can do. In that way, then, the content of the discussion is less important than experimenting with the application. If you don't have anything to say, or if you can't think of anything, that's fine. Just play with the application and engage others. But ideally, you'd engage in the discussion and play as you do so.
What does success look like?
If you're not having fun, you're not doing the activity correctly. Sure, if you have ideas about how to hack a discussion forum, that's great. Share them. Or brainstorm with others. That'd be great too. But, given that the point of turning to Disqus in the first place is to create the conditions for a "[r]ampant online discussion" (Urgency, n. pg), and since a rampant online discussion requires "carefully cultivated spontaneity" (n. pg), you're doing the activity right if you're just being yourself. While I surely wouldn't go so far as to say that I've carefully cultivated this environment, the environment has been minimally cultivated nonetheless. To emphasis what I hope is obvious, I'll be happy if you minimally respond to the bullets and maximally play around.
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