Online Discussions in Blended Learning

The Internet is increasingly being used in higher educationin several countries in the last decade, resulting in online,blended, and web-enhanced course offerings for students.Instructors who experiment with computer-mediated communicationtools like discussion forums, chat rooms, and blogs to facilitatecourse discussions struggle to combine both online and classroomdiscussions effectively. This book presents two models for theintegration of online discussions into the classroom to enhancestudent learning. Based on qualitative research in two universitycourses that used Blackboard, several benefits of these two modelsfor instructors and students with different teaching and learningstyles are discussed in this book. It also provides insight intothe role of instructional design, instructor participation, andinstructor feedback in web-enhanced instruction. This book containsstrategies for effectively using and facilitating asynchronousonline discussions that will be of special interest to teachers,educators, practitioners, trainers, educational technologists, andcurriculum designers seeking to design and implement blendedinstruction.