Hello, my name is Melody Hawkins, eighth-grade science teacher at Environmental Magnet School, and I would like to show you how I use Canvas discussion boards to create an interactive Canvas course for my students. I like to use many features of Canvas, but one that I have learned to truly appreciate are the discussion board features. I believe that it's important for students to have a chance to interact with each other as much as they do interact with me, so I try to use the discussion boards as a way to create the interaction, of course, especially for students who may not feel comfortable sharing out loud; they definitely have the opportunity to do that digitally.

Here are some examples of the ways that I utilize discussion boards:

I definitely like to use them at the beginning of the school year to establish the collaborative learning environment that I want my students to be accustomed to. But I also use discussion boards for peer reviews between students. I use discussion boards for student reflections so that they can view what others may feel about different tasks and activities. And then, one that I have really learned to like a lot is using discussion boards for a digital parking lot.

So here's an example of how I use the discussion boards to create collaborative environments: I first like to always make sure at the beginning of class that I'm asking some type of bell ringer that's either a review from the day before or a preview for the day's learning or setting up some different things that we're going to be doing for the course of a couple of days or weeks. So I like to make sure that my students do have a question to answer on their discussion board. Once they answer their question, I then like to ask them to go ahead and like a comment that they think is correct.

The liking feature is really cool, and it's something you can kind of turn on or enable within the discussion board, so if you do not want students to be able to like each other's comments, then you can easily make sure that that feature is not available. Another way that I like to utilize the discussion boards is with peer reviews, and this is a little bit more complex way to get my students interacting with each other.

Let's say the students have a couple of questions that I want them to answer as a bell ringer or as a class activity, but then after they answer those questions, I then have another task for them on the discussion board, which is to look at someone else's post, add a comment using different stems. And I pull these from the accountable talks, so this is another way at kind of a deeper way to get students interacting with each other and to have the opportunity to agree with someone or disagree with someone constructively, which is a very important skill for our students in today's world.

Another way that I utilize the discussion board is also with reflections. So I typically have my students doing different labs. Sometimes those labs are virtual, and sometimes those labs are hands-on for them. But either way, I love to get student feedback and reflections about the complexity of the labs, if they felt like they were difficult or hard, and not just with labs, with any class activity or any assignment that I have them engaging with for the day.

So sometimes I utilize the discussion board to house those different thoughts. My favorite question on the discussion board for reflection activities or favorite tasks is to have students rate their understanding of the topic that we were discussing for the day. And then, in the day after or in another day, we can go back to that discussion board and really engage in dialogue about their understanding and if their understanding has improved and let them have a chance to really take some accountability and ownership so they're learning and understanding.

The last way that I have learned to utilize discussion boards in my classes is as a digital parking lot. And again, I've had a lot of fun using this digital parking lot throughout this school year for my students. We are all most likely familiar with parking lots and how they work, and again, it's just a place to kind of hold questions, add onto comments, or maybe suggest ideas. I used this discussion board this year for students to add any questions that they had about the topic that we were covering.

So throughout the week, my students visited this discussion board, and they were able to add different questions that they had. And it was great because I was able to kind of have a student in charge of going back and checking that discussion board periodically to make sure that we're addressing the questions that everyone may have, and it really allowed them to take charge of their learning and to drive the different things that we were doing in class.

I definitely saw a lot of students add questions to the discussion board that they may have not felt comfortable asking in front of the whole class. So this was definitely something that I was very happy to give them the opportunity to use. These are the different ways that I use the discussion boards in my classroom, and I'm always looking for more ways to use them. I think it's a wonderful feature; it's very easy to use.

When you create a discussion board, you will have the option to give it a title. You can then type in the specific task or assignment or questions that you want your students to answer. I do multiple-choice questions and also sometimes I'll utilize just open-ended or short-answer questions. Either way though, I can definitely make sure to include a chance for students to interact with each other, and that's what really helps the discussion board come to life is giving students the task to complete where they have to read someone else's responses.

This here is the different options for allowing users to post before they can see anyone's reply, so you have to check that. Allowing liking on the discussion board is also something that has to be enabled, and then I usually enable the allow threaded replies so that students can their conversation is able to follow more clearly. Once you complete that, save and publish, and you're ready to use your discussion board for your class. I hope that this explanation helps you and that you're able to do amazing and wonderful things for the discussion board feature.

Thank you for joining me today.