The Skillful Teacher

Creating Participatory Discussion Online
One way to warm the climate for online learning, and to give stu-
dents the sense they are part of an active learning community, is to
stimulate as much participatory discussion as possible. A participa-
tory discussion is one in which most learners participate, in some
form, at least part of the time. Without broad participation in
online discussion, students suffer a sense of isolation, a sense of lack-
ing membership in a virtual learning community. Yet a feeling of
belonging is reported as crucial to keeping students in online pro-
grams (Lewis and Allan, 2005). Students also need practice in
expressing their ideas cogently, and participating in online discussion
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allows them to have access to the diversity of viewpoints that helps
them make connections between different aspects of content. One
strategy to increase participation online is to hold occasional real-
time conversations in which each person in the group, in turn, has
a chance to make a comment about the topic under discussion with-
out interruption from anyone else. In this online variant of the 
Circle of Voices exercise, more free-flowing conversation ensues
once all the participants have had an opportunity to post their ini-
tial responses. Each person’s contribution, however, must somehow
refer to what someone else has said during the first round. This helps
ensure wider online participation, but it does create two additional
problems. First, the discussion sometimes becomes rather stilted and
can sap energy as the group waits for each person to post. Second,
once the more open dialogue resumes, the same problem can arise
of a few people dominating the exchange.
The technique known as Circular Response also prevents a few
people from dominating the exchange and helps bring focus to par-
ticipants’ contributions. Circular Response requires all speakers to
begin their remarks by commenting on the previous participant’s
observations and to use those observations as a springboard for their
own contributions. Once again, online environments are particu-
larly conducive to this process. Contributors to the conversation
can actually see and read what the previous speaker has said and
thus more easily frame their comments to explore the themes that
were raised. Indeed, Circular Response is so well suited for online
discussion that it would be quite appropriate to require that all
online exchanges begin with a reference to a previous contribution.
According to learners, online instructors need to be present and