Reflect on your experience facilitating a discussion.

To facilitate a discussion I would make sure to use open ended questions, which require multiple layers of thought and encourage help and feedback. For instance, take the following question: What role does technology have in your classroom? This question, while open ended, does not allow the latitude for discussion that you, as an online professor, are hoping for. You would want to encourage the processing of not only the learner's usage of tech, but others as well. To do so you change your question to the following, What role does technology have in your school? This has more scope, but is too vague as they could talk about the new metal detectors and or HD CCTV (high definition closed circuit television) cameras at the school. Whereas this is technology, it is not INSTRUCTIONAL technology (IT).

How about this one? What role does instructional technology have in the classrooms at your school? Better, add to that though. For instance, prompt them to again assess and analyze the usage so that they can see the do's and don'ts, pro's and cons, etc. You want them to understand that technology, though a boon, can be a bane as well, if not applied properly. SO, What role does instructional technology have in the classrooms at your school? Discuss, teachers who use it well, don't use it at all, don't use it enough, use it badly, or over use it. Here we have given them some talking points which can not only direct their communication, but their communication as a manifestation of their deliberate and critical analysis about the instructional technology in the school. Always remember that learner's communication is to provide you, the instructor, with a window into their understanding and mastery or lack thereof regarding the content, so your questions must always be crafted in a way that achieves that purpose.

Furthermore, consider this addition:

What role does instructional technology have in the classrooms at your school? Discuss, teachers who use it well, don't use it at all, don't use it enough, use it badly, and/or over use it. What category do you fall in now? Where do you want to be? After assessing the state of IT at your school, what realistic goals and time-lines can you set to improve your own dynamic and inspiring practice? What differences and similarities do you see between and amongst the other schools documented by your peers?

This final prompt, I believe, while asking a lot, will spur not only excellent opportunities for inter-student communication, but also intra-student communication, by having the student not only analyze and critique others, but also themselves. If “we are our own worse critics”, then the introspection inherent here will make that more productive via planning for improvement. Additionally, the healthy competition with others in the building and others in the online course will make an amazing difference in the learner's class and the school.

Though I took a while to explain my train of thought in terms of this prompt development, I felt it very important to model, exactly what I am implying 'good' communication does for the teacher-student relationship, it begets understanding of understanding and mastery or the lack thereof. Therefore, I made sure to document my development of the prompt and my reasoning behind the changes. Let us all make sure that every time that we communicate, regardless of the relationship, that we our language is to convey and transmit a message whether that of love, sorrow, understanding, struggle, success etc. So it is up to us as educators to communicate exactly what we want from our students, so that they have no choice, but to analyze and assimilate, think and reflect, as well as perform and produce.