Logistics: assessing online discussions

Moodle provides a wonderful variety of discussion forums – they provide for reflection, engagement, deeper understanding, broad participation, and much else – but the work also needs to be assessed.  Here’s one way to handle it:

I’ve set each discussion forum to send me an email whenever a student posts.  I can read the post on the spot and even click on a reply button in the email.  But I prefer to group replying and grading into clumps, rather than doing them piecemeal.  My replies and assessments are more consistent that way.  But I like to see if there are problems, misunderstandings, or the occasional inappropriate post that I need to address now. 

Replying at one time every day works well – otherwise you’ll feel like you’re being nibbled to death by ducks, and lose a sense of how the discussion is developing.
   
Since I’m usually looking for students to engage with the question and with each other, and since these are evolving skills, my focus is on formative assessment.  Can I use my replies to coax the student into deeper thought?  Does the student have a question that needs answering?  (Since I teach blended classes, I often bring these items up during F2F class, benefiting both the student who posted and the entire class.)
  
Moodle forums are a bit cumbersome to grade.   To see the posts in context, one must click on the forum, then on the post to open it (unless using the single, simple discussion).  Then click on Reply and write the reply.  Then click on Post to forum.  Then on Continue.  Then on the name of the forum.  And on to the next student.  But this gives me the flavor of the entire discussion that I don’t get from the emails. 

I keep a blank class list to write comments on and often just use: checkmark, +, or -.  If I’ve asked for replies to at least two classmates, I make checkmarks for these.  Keeping this information in one place for each assignment makes keeping track of student work and coming up with a grade easier.  My grading for most discussions is done/not done, though with loss of points when there is not much effort.  I’m focusing on building confidence and participation.

If I see that there is nothing on the class list/grading sheet for a student, I’ll then go to Participants and pull up the student’s record, which has all their forum posts in one place.  This shows me quickly if the student posted and I somehow missed it (perhaps the student replied to somebody else when they were supposed to create a separate thread). 

My school has an online gradebook, Gradequick, so I mostly use that gradebook rather than Moodle’s.  It takes about a minute to enter one class’ grades there.

I wish there were a quicker way to get through the process of replying to Moodle discussions, so if anybody knows of one, please let me know!

Keeping track of all that writing/talking

    I used to go to the Moodle discussion forums every day to read new posts, but that got time-consuming, especially when there were multiple forums with threads to check. And I wanted to be immediately responsive to "help me" posts.

    I learned a better alternative - to be sure I'm subscribed to each forum.  How?  Set auto-subscribe in your profile, as shown in the screen shot, to "Yes, when I post subscribe me to that forum."  You just have to make sure you post at least one thread to the forum.  (You can always unsubscribe to a specific forum later if you need to.)

    Why subscribe?  Because Moodle sends me an email for every post a student makes to a discussion forum.  The emails have an easily recognizable subject line so I can distinguish these from other emails until I can look at them.  Since students tend to do their work at night, I tend to get this work in a clump first thing in the morning when I open my email account. 

    As I read through I quickly see posts that need action - usually posts outrageously full of sloppy errors. I flag these just like other emails that need to be addressed further.  The rest I read through and delete. I can click on a link in each email that will take me right to the post, which is handy if I'm replying or if I want to see the post in context. I've noticed that images in posts aren't visible in the emails, but I suspect that's a function of my email server.  

    When I see a post that needs action from the student - especially if it contains errors that need correcting.  - I just print the email and hand it right to the student.  This works much better than emailing the student (middle school students don't check their email much), or posting a reply to the post (the student might not return to this post and so won't see it).  Being able to return work for correction in person is one of the advantages of a blended class.  And I have email flags to remind me to follow up if necessary.

    In the past I didn't use the emails for grading, but went back later.  Now I'm working on getting into the habit of grading at the same time.