[Reprinted from Syllabus: New Dimensions in Education Technology, vol. 14, no. 2, September 2000, pages 21, 24.]

In an online course teachers can employ many of the same active learning strategies they use in their classrooms to encourage good thinking, engage students in the course content, and promote their intellectual development.

1. Design self-testing quizzes and tutorials on basic chapter content.

In a web course the usual source of course content is a textbook and teacher-written text, so it is important for students to self-test understanding of their reading.  If test-writing software is not available, an easy method is to post questions in one file and post models of good and poor answers (with commentary) in another file.  Instructors can use the quiz as a gateway to the online discussion; allowing only those students who pass the quiz into the discussion.

2. Apply the concepts of the textbook chapters to cases or issues every week.

Asking students to apply course concepts in informal writing tasks such as homework assignments is probably the most obvious and frequently used approach to promoting thinking.  Responses can be written by groups or individuals, posted publicly in the conference, or collected in a student’s assignment portfolio.  In small groups where students prepare a single written response to teacher-posed problems, their thinking is clarified as students consider several perspectives and negotiate the language to articulate their response.

Informal writing tasks on  course-based topics are especially good for promoting course-based thinking.  Private, personal applications can be placed in assignment folders; less personal topics can be placed in a public conference.  Colleges with writing across the curriculum programs are likely to have a rich collection of tasks available through their teaching and learning centers. Asking 25 students to respond individually to one scenario or topic in a conference will result in thoughtful responses from the first three responders and "I think so too" from the remaining 22. To avoid boring repetition, variations of the scenario or topic can be posed to a smaller group of three-four students. For example, ask for individual responses to Scenario no. 1 from names beginning A-C, to Scenario no. 2 from D-G, and so on.

3. Pose well-designed questions for asynchronous discussion.

Here is the ubiquitous Bloom higher-order thinking taxonomy and typical objectives within the categories:

Knowledge. Identification and recall of information: tell who, what, when, where, how; describe.

Comprehension. Organization and selection of facts and ideas: retell, state the main idea.

Application. Use of facts, rules, principles: use example, relate, explain significance.

Analysis. Separation of a whole into component parts: breakdown into features, classify, outline or diagram, compare/contrast, present evidence.

Synthesis. Combination of ideas to form a new whole: predict/infer, add ideas to, create/design, combine, suggest solutions.

Evaluation. Development of opinions, judgments, or decisions: agree/disagree, explain, prioritize, decide, assess.

The point here is not to befuddle students but to dispel complacency by creating cognitive dissonance.  Accompanying a disorienting intellectual situation is a wish to resolve it.  Students who experience a gap in their knowledge will seek to fill it.  For example, an instructor can design a task that uses students’ prior knowledge but also requires new information or procedures that the students do not know.  Students become aware of a gap between the task’s goal and what they need to know or to do to meet it.  Creating this need to know in students is a basic strategy underlying inquiry learning and problem-based learning.  Socratic questioning is a variation on this theme.  The basic structure of Socratic questioning begins with inquiry, leads to perplexity, and ends with enlightenment.

5. Ask students to reflect on their responses to the course content and on their learning processes in private journals.

Improving students’ metacognitive abilities is crucial to improving their thinking; reflecting on one’s learning processes is crucial to becoming a better learner.  Students can move toward both goals by writing in private journals.  For example, one can grade journals holistically on the criteria of thoroughness and responsiveness to the instructor’s questions.

6. Conduct opinion polls/surveys as pre-reading activities before assigned readings and to arouse interest in issues or topics.

Like everyone else, students seem to have opinions on any issue, whether or not they are well-informed.  To generate interest in assigned readings, an instructor can conduct a survey of students’ opinions on the issue or test their prior knowledge of the facts presented in the readings. Another  pre-reading strategy is to mix data from the assigned readings with wrong data that the instructor invents and then ask students which facts are true and which are false.

7. Present activities that require considering opposing views.

In asynchronous discussions or as formal or informal assignments, ask students to consider opposing views, methods, data, principles, concepts, definitions, interpretations, and conclusions. Dialectical thinking (sometimes called dialogical thinking) is one of the best ways to engage students’ minds and personalities, challenge their previously held beliefs, promote openmindedness, defer the rush to judgment, and move them to higher intellectual stages. Adopting a position and explaining why it is better than the alternative requires knowledge, reasoned judgment, and intellectual criteria.

8. Assign a mediatory argument promoting a resolution acceptable to both sides.

This strategy comes from The Aims of Argument by Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell.  The purpose of the argument to mediate or negotiate is to seek consensus within an audience polarized by differences in a context where there is a need to cooperate and to preserve good relations. The mediatory argument uses reasons and evidence to persuade opposing sides to resolve an issue in a way that satisfies both sides, an approach that can extend students’ thinking beyond their simply supporting one side of a dichotomy.

An expanded version of this article, with examples and resources, is available at http://academic.pgcc.edu/~wpeirce/MCCCTR/ttol.html

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