Education 2.0 & 3.0

The discussion board is certainly not new to the online classroom. In fact, some may argue that the discussion board is one of the most well-known and used tools in online courses. While the discussion board is ubiquitous within the different Learning Management Systems (LMS) that exist, and is consistently included in online courses as a way to collect formative assessment data and engage students, its use could be elevated by aligning Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Anderson, Krathwohl, & Bloom, 2001) with discussion board prompts. Focusing on the cognitive knowledge domain, Bloom’s Taxonomy provides a hierarchical framework of learning outcomes that instructors can use to create more interactive, diverse, and impactful ways for students to experience deeper learning (Mehta & Fine, 2019) and meaningful discourse surrounding course content.

With online teaching and learning becoming the norm for so many teachers and students during the COVID-19 climate, it is important to be aware of what makes an engaging, creative and effective web-based teaching and learning experience.