2. More than Leveling Tools: From Managing Effective Discussions to Designing Performative Interactions

One long-recognized affordance of asynchronous online discussions for developing the online pedagogies described in the introduction is their ability to decenter or level traditional classroom hierarchies. On screen, students can and do take the lead, interacting directly without the constraints of the teacher-centered, onsite classroom, thereby taking more control over their learning processes, an outcome that has been seen as a significant paradigmatic change associated with e-learning (Amy, 2006, p. 113; Selber, 2004, pp. 84-5; etc.). And alongside the leveling theorem sits the more general notion that such online spaces provide alternate venues for higher education. This notion is indeed foundational for considering online instruction as a means for providing more students greater access to learning (Kear, 2011, pp. 55-57; Warnock, 2009, pp. xi-xii). Such observations about educational access and socialization have, moreover, been applied to online discussion platforms particularly (including LMS-hosted forums, newsgroups, e-mail lists, etc.), seeing them as alternate sites and ancillary tools for facilitating academic socialization and learning (Beckett, Amaro-Jiménez, & Beckett, 2010; Hawisher & Pemberton; Yagelski, 1998; Yancey, 2000; etc.).

However, complications with this leveling and online socialization has meant that much practical guidance for asynchronous discussions in composition and language learning courses focuses on participation and discussion management, rather than implementing particular approaches for teaching composition. Not only have studies suggested that social and institutional disparities often replicate themselves onscreen (Selber, 2004, p. 85), but in cases they don’t, the outcomes do not necessarily produce the inclusive dialogic space hoped for by proponents of the technologies (Amy, 2006, pp. 113-20). In some cases, the participation is inconsistent (Hawisher & Pemberton, 1998), while in others, participants digress from the aims of the assignment or dismiss the value of peer responses (Rendahl & Breuch, 2013, pp. 309, 312). Thus, the guidance turns cautionary, focusing on ways to avoid unsuccessful discussions, especially by ensuring that instructions are clear (Beckett et al., 2010, pp. 323-4;), that the purposes of the discussion are understood (Yagelski, 1998, pp. 346-7), that there are expectations for consistent participation (Beckett et al., 2010, pp. 323-4; Hawisher & Pemberton, 1998, p. 36), and that all accept the need for civil conduct and the goal of developing a supportive learning community (Amy, 2006, pp. 124-5).

Given these cautionary concerns, the constructive role of asynchronous discussions among the larger pedagogical aims of the writing course is often lost, not considered beyond the leveling theorem. Such an absence may explain Gillam and Wooden’s observation as late as 2013 that “the best parts of composition pedagogy are precisely what’s missing in most online learning situations” (p. 26). To rectify this omission, Gillam and Wooden draw on ecological models for online first-year composition. They explain how discussion boards, working alongside other online technologies, can foster a “roots to fruits” approach (p. 32). Their “multi-step” assignments lead students through various forms of interaction, starting with “purposeful” topic development facilitated by “discussion scripts” (p. 31) and proceeding through the development of a full paper. While not all their interactive steps use discussion boards, they easily could, as will be shown with the section describing the framework of orchestrated discussion, which like Gillam and Wooden’s ecological model, seeks to use the affordances of the electronic medium to grow students’ interactions into a “purposeful community of inquiry” (p. 28).

On that note, we might revisit the core elements of the formal CoI model, especially by considering how the different categories of presence and cognitive phases, in particular, map onto the concerns of composition pedagogy for early college students. As suggested in the introduction, we would need to consider the possibility that expressions of cognitive presence exhibit a social presence as well, and one that is intimately tied to the ways students communicate knowledge. Although social presence is presumed to be cohesive and community building on the CoI model (Makri, 2014, p. 185), studies in composition suggest that this is not always the case—indeed, these are the conclusions of the more cautionary studies cited earlier in this section. Moreover, the very model of cognitive phasing in CoI suggests that observations voiced at the beginning of a dialogue do not demonstrate high-level thinking, though such an assumption may well go against the encouragement we give students to explore topics with which they have personal engagement, maybe even a substantial amount of knowledge, even if not academically expressed.

Put another way, the phases of cognitive development in the standard CoI model do not easily account for the challenge of negotiating with one’s past language practice as a socio-intellectual identity, one potentially exhibiting quite sophisticated thinking. Indeed, for a course like first-year writing, initial responses to triggering prompts and early exploration of a topic in a communal fashion may well entail sophisticated integrations and applications of course concepts, though not always in a manner adhering to standards of academic discourse—a common outcome for work presented by non-traditional students, who often have years of work experience and families. The focus, then, is how to use asynchronous discussion to explain and encourage academic ways of expressing thinking without alienating students socially, that is, without suggesting their past expressions of understanding and topics of discussion were fundamentally incorrect or insufficient, perhaps even by calling attention to the idiosyncrasies of academic discursive moves and socialization.

So, while we can encourage communal inquiry, as in the CoI model (albeit without conceding that later phases represent categorically “higher level” thinking), more attention needs to be directed towards the collateral discursive attunement taking place in the dialogic interactions themselves. Here we should discuss teacher presence. In the managed discussion models noted above, instructors attune students to discursive conventions more or less explicitly, that is, by establishing and enforcing class policies for interaction and moderating asynchronous dialogue directly. Such an authoritative presence may well be warranted, even hard to avoid in some situations. However, when the discussion design foregrounds the instructor’s moderating role and doesn’t promote other kinds of teacher presence, we may just confirm misconceptions of academic discourse, namely, that it’s about following rules set by an authority figure, not about intersubjective inquiry into important subjects and critical thinking about the different ways through which both understanding and authority are expressed in dialogic exchanges.

I propose, instead, a framework in which the instructor’s central roles in the active discussion, and in helping students attune themselves to the conventions of academic discourse, are those of performance modeler and reflective practitioner. To achieve this shift, however, more attention needs to be placed on how the predesigned prompts direct interactivity on the discussion board. Particularly, we are interested in how the prompts may encourage students to experiment with discursive identities conducive to the development of new literacies. Such experimentation may be easier to cultivate if the teacher’s presence as moderator is downplayed, something relatively easy to achieve when discussion prompts take on a depersonalized directive form and when instructors subject themselves—that is, perform—the directions on the prompts as well. While it is not entirely possible to erase the teacher’s authoritative presence from the discussion space (nor perhaps desired), it is possible to create an interactive environment that emphasizes the generative use of guidelines (i.e., the directive prompts) in dialogic performance—the more so when instructors show they can follow directions too.

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, designing such depersonalized directive interactions may indeed be a socially-aware, student-centered endeavor, a point I’ll support by invoking literacy scholar James Gee. Gee’s influential work on sociolinguistics emphasizes that literacy development depends on socialization within discourse communities, not objective understandings of grammatical conventions (2012/1990). For our purposes, though, it is significant that he complements these social theories of language acquisition with an examination of learning in video games, that is, learning in electronic environments embodying socially significant language practices within predesigned interactive spaces lacking immediate human presence (2003). Players of video games learn as they perform progressively more sophisticated actions and interactions relevant to both short-term and long-term goals of the game. Good video games, as Gee (2012) notes, allow players to perform these tasks in the process of shaping their identities within the game. Most significantly, though, Gee emphasizes that the roles players develop within games have genuine connections to those they adopt in real-life social situations (pp. 59-66).

The interactivity writing teachers design through discussion board prompts might include a similar kind of deliberate, identity-enabling performative sequencing, yet replace the game goals with those of a discourse community being taught as part of the course. In first-year writing, this should generally reflect the aims of an inclusive academic community seeking to build knowledge of socially relevant themes in a critical manner. To encourage interactivity that fosters reflective dialogic engagement about meaningful themes, then, class discussion boards might not be conceived simply as stand-alone assignments, nor as ongoing free-form discussions, two typical approaches that certainly have their uses. Rather, they might be designed to cultivate an ongoing, communal examination of how specific discursive moves, both those brought into the class by students and those taught as part of the course of instruction, do or do not enable deeper understandings of the varied forms of expression and relevant themes of class discussion.

3. Orchestrated Conversation: A Framework for Pedagogical Praxis in Online Discussion Boards

In this section, I explain a framework for designing interaction in asynchronous online discussions by using the metaphor of musical orchestration, an apt figure for conceptualizing the deliberate performative sequencing described above, especially given the interpersonal coordination involved in both conversational performance and musical arrangement. Although the framework accounts for a variety of instructional roles and teacher presence, I subsume them under two broad categories of pedagogical practice: discussion design, or composing the “score,” and real-time orchestration, “conducting” the discussion. My treatment of each category, moreover, takes into account the recognized cautions noted about asynchronous dialogues in the previous section, including the need for clear instructions and recurrent peer-to-peer engagement, while nonetheless attempting to establish a constructive approach to literacy development.

Before proceeding to each category, however, I should explain that, when I refer to “orchestrated discussion,” I am thinking specifically of a coordinated series of posting assignments arranged into multiple interactive “movements,” each asking students to reflect on, respond to, and selectively develop classmates’ previous postings. This approach differs both from stand-alone prompt-response-reply sequences and from forums setup to host extended topic-focused conversations. As demonstrated in my companion OLOR piece and in the detailed walkthrough of an example of orchestrated discussion in the next section, the multiple movements do indeed take place over a series of weeks, like the latter open-forum paradigm. However, each movement also entails varying degrees of performative scripting to ensure students build upon the class’s previous intellectual work, both in how they respond to each other and in how they choose to develop topics that write to their own interests.

3.1. Discussion Design: Sequencing Experimental Interactivity to Support Reflective Practice

As noted above, the discussion is driven by a sequence of assignments directing students to post messages to a series of corresponding boards. Each assignment includes two or more posting prompts, one for an initial post and at least one for replies. Below, I explain four principles for designing and sequencing prompts, each of which I tie to the literature on discussion boards and e-learning. These principles are followed by a list of four genres of postings that accommodate these principles and that are demonstrated in the example implementation that follows.

​Prompt Principle 1: Treat each discussion post as a more or less experimental responsive performance. 

It is important to think of these prompts as eliciting specific types of discursive performances, rather than simply posing questions or requesting information or opinions. One key affordance of online asynchronous platforms is that they make it easy to have students experiment with discursive roles and voices (Oleseva et al., 2016; Spiliotopoulous & Carey, 2005, pp. 96-7; Hendrix, 2006, pp. 72-4). A well-designed online discussion, as Webb Boyd (2008) observes, can even help students adopt voices they may feel less comfortable articulating in face-to-face settings imposing other social pressures (p. 236; cf. Beckett et al., 2010, p. 323). While students will certainly perform familiar, even comfortable, roles, including those that entail expressions of opinion or relaying personal information, the goals of the performative sequencing are to have them experiment with new rhetorical identities, ones particularly relevant to the discourse community to which they are being introduced.

Prompt Principle 2: Vary performance expectations to balance energy, experimentation, and peer-to-peer engagement. 

The coordination of interaction is crucial for successfully sequencing familiar and novel performances. Gee (2003) explains that inviting learning environments, like some of the most engaging video games, offer multiple forms of readily-rewarded “low-input” interactivity, all while gradually encouraging learners to invest more time and intellectual effort in performing incrementally more sophisticated and unfamiliar tasks, especially by reflectively adapting previous performances to new scenarios (pp. 61-71). An online discussion might, then, begin by asking students to complete a variety of familiar or novel-but-low-input performances at the edge of their “regime of competence” (again from Gee). These performances could then be validated by the instructor in various ways, for instance, with participation points and through brief in-discussion affirmations (see more below). Ideally, though, in the spirit of dialogic discovery, the main sense of reward should come from validation through peer replies, which should not be considered lesser performances than the initial postings. The replies too represent steps toward more sophisticated discursive practices.

Prompt Principle 3: Use directive reply prompts to encourage both improvised and deliberately analytical engagement with peers. 

Given the substantial role of reply in dialogic discovery, responses to others’ postings might, then, also have more or less direction, given that they too are learned discursive practices. Although impromptu, improvised replies should always be welcome as natural manifestations of social presence, directive reply prompts can ensure students engage with, reflect upon, and reprocess class members’ previous postings in purposeful ways. Directive reply prompts provide students further opportunities to take on an even wider variety of discursive roles, and therefore to exhibit more varied forms of cognitive and social presence. The reply prompts can also direct students towards rhetorical moves that facilitate the recognition of affinities with other students, a key step towards building community (Gee, 2003, pp. 192-3; Gillam & Wooden, 2013, p. 33). Spontaneous interactions based on common interests are indeed fortuitous in writing classes, but we can teach students more deliberate ways of discovering affinities too, including those that reflect academic modes of conversation, as I’ll discuss in my sample implementation in the next section.

Prompt Principle 4: Script prompts for late-stage discussion movements to encourage reflective reprocessing of earlier dialogic exchanges. 

The overarching aim of such scripting, finally, is to develop students’ critical literacies through reflective participation in dialogue. Although discussion boards are fairly rudimentary social-media technologies, one important affordance of the medium is that it nonetheless records in a remarkably clear manner the dialogic interactions entailed in sophisticated knowledge work (Murphy, 2004). By giving discursive activities “embodiment” online (Gillam & Wooden, 2013, pp. 31-33), the score of the discussion enables reflection on the kinds of rhetorical gestures and topics that do or do not resonate with members of the discourse community. Thus, the persistence of the forums together with the purposeful scripting of particular kinds of performances for experimentation can facilitate the development of students into reflective practitioners (Webb Boyd, 2008, pp. 237-241), an outcome of the discussion that, we hope, transforms student identities through the self-aware and socially conscious acquisition of academic literacies.

3.2 A Repertoire of Posting Prompts for Orchestrated Discussion.

In the next section and in my OLOR piece, I describe an arrangement of orchestrated movements I have used for my first-year writing courses. Although I use phrases like “exploration” and “inquiry” to describe the arrangement, like CoI designs, orchestrated discussions depend more on deliberately varied interaction with other students’ postings than on straight-line cognitive phasing, as explained in the principles above. I draw on four different types of postings within the orchestral metaphor, each eliciting a particular type of dialogic performance. Below, they appear in an order reflecting how they are commonly introduced in a discussion, but, as my example implementation shows, students perform these broad categories of prompts recursively with slight variations to encourage incremental experimentation that enables meaningful reflective practice.

Instrumental overtures: 

The prompts for these opening postings call for an initial performance from students, but not simply by way of responding to a simple “icebreaker” prompt. Rather, the prompts ask students to write in a familiar genre (the “instrument”) on a more or less broad theme (i.e., one relevant to the class or unit). Students thereby introduce themselves through their personalized interpretations of genre and theme. At the same time, though, it should be emphasized that these performances also serve as the primary triggers for inquiry into meaningful themes of discussion, that is, themes chosen and developed by the students themselves.

Counterpoint contributions: 

In counterpoint postings, students are asked to perform directed interactions with each other’s earlier postings to develop further the themes they find engaging, and to do so by practicing particular discursive gestures. Following upon the “overtures,” counterpoint prompts ask students to take the initial thematic keynotes in new directions. The prompts for these posting assignments can take a variety of forms, but they generally require students to amplify, redirect, or provide contrast to classmates’ earlier treatments of class themes.

Improvisational interludes: 

While both the initial and the follow-up posts described above necessitate students’ personalization of directive prompts, there is value in providing space for more open interaction, in particular, by encouraging, even requiring (at least initially) casual replies to classmates. These posts offer students another way to amplify topics they find engaging, thereby to discover and reinforce common affinities with classmates.

Purposeful recapitulations: 

In the later movements of the orchestrated conversation, students recapitulate meaningful themes in novel forms, forms reflecting the more sophisticated or novel literacy practices associated with the discourse community.

3.3 Instructor Orchestration: Modeling and Reflecting on Performance

The “conductor” position of the orchestrated conversation actually entails multiple roles, each positioning the instructor as mentor in the academic discourse community. Below, I have identified three particularly useful roles for conceptualizing online discussions as orchestrated conversations.

Instructor Role 1: Lead Instrumentalist. 

While the conventional roles of moderator or even equal participant are open to instructors, in orchestrated discussion, they also model discursive performances, especially rhetorical moves new to students. Modeling has generally been recognized as a way to improve students’ contributions to the dialogue (Warnock, 2009, p.76). Instructor performances can demonstrate expectations of civility, depth, or conventional readability, or they can give students an idea of how to pose dissenting positions in a civil manner (Yagelski, 2000, p. 356). Other kinds of performative postings can also be used, however, as Scott Warnock (2010) has shown in his use of devil’s advocate persona (p. 104). Simply put, when instructors view themselves as performers to imitate or challenge, they make it easier for students to envision themselves taking on particular rhetorical identities relevant to the discourse community.

Instructor Role 2: Reflective Practitioner. 

But instructors also model behaviors outside the discussion itself, especially by adopting the role of reflective practitioner, which we already noted as a role we also hope students adopt. The instructor can, first of all, help students recognize how they and their peers already (knowingly or unknowingly) exercise and impose a range of discursive conventions based on experiences within both academic and non-academic discourse communities. Gee (2012) observes that a common challenge of teaching a diverse student body to learn conventional, and so socially empowered, forms of literacy is that the teacher potentially devalues students’ home cultures (pp. 179-184). Thus, in agreement with others cited in the introduction, Gee suggests that one responsible approach is to teach students new discourses in a comparative fashion (cf. Delpit, 1998, pp. 216-7), one that allows the conventions and social practices associated with various discourses to be critiqued as they are learned (pp. 170-171). Off-discussion exchanges about the progression of each movement, as or after students experiment with a variety of rhetorical moves, offer opportunities for fruitful comparisons, especially when particular performances are examined alongside those reflecting alternate approaches to treating common topics of interest.

Instructor Role 3: Performance Reviewer. 

Just as instructors are assigned the responsibility in teaching conventional modes of writing as part of the literacy sponsorship afforded to them by their institutions, so too do those same institutions expect grades and other forms of summative assessment. For better or worse, moreover, students tend to be motivated by the grades for discussion participation (deNoyelles et al., 2014, 156). While simple class participation credit might be offered for student postings, the discussions can serve as low-stakes opportunities to introduce and apply common criteria for evaluating academic discourse, either with grades or written feedback. In fact, given that students will be able to see a range of performances from classmates, the use of grades in this broader dialogic framework can allow the grades themselves to be more clearly part of the ongoing reflective practice, and yet without the high-stakes stress commonly associated with extended compositions or at the end of the term.

4. Example Implementation: Orchestrated Discussion in First-Year Writing

[8] The implementation explained below has been used in the two entry-level writing classes described above. These asynchronous discussion assignments complement each course’s formal paper assignments. As we reach the midpoint of the class, the orchestrated discussion begins to merge with the formal paper writing process, once students start to do exploratory research for their final research paper. This step precedes the submission of a formal topic proposal, which is the focus of the final movement in the orchestrated discussion. The overarching strategy of the discussion design is to transform the initial semi-formal conversation about students’ social, civic, and vocational lives—the broad themes driving these first-year writing courses—into an academic conversation on related subjects, a conversation that students develop with greater analytical depth and critical thinking, as well as by synthesizing their voices with those of outside sources.

4.1. Context of Discussion Assignments within Course

[9] As noted above, this strand of course activity occurs alongside other coursework during the first half of class until it finally intertwines with the formal final paper assignment (see Figure 1 immediately below for an overview and Table 1 further below for details). In terms of the course grade, the entire sequence of postings contributes partly to class participation credit (15% of the class grade), but it is also allocated about 20% of the overall course points, a portion that is justified especially by the later postings, which in more traditional classes might be completed offline in conventional forms (e.g., annotated bibliographies) and receive substantial points. But the allocation of substantial points to bulletin board discussions has an important benefit in itself: it validates the online modality—and discussion forums in particular—as a place for serious coursework, especially by integrating an institutional practice (i.e., grading) that, for better or worse, is recognized as a key measure of seriousness for college coursework. Of course, the grading is complemented by other forms of reinforcement, particularly by both peer and instructor validation in replies and responses within the discussion.

4.2. Pacing of Posting Assignments

[10] In the scheme described below, students complete the first postings as they begin the first week of class, an assignment due by midweek for online-only sections and before the first class meeting for one-night-a-week hybrid sections. For both formats, students receive their first assignment before the first week of class to allow them to begin interacting before the first synchronous meeting—there are almost always a few who do. However, when I have used a similar discussion practice while teaching standard-paced sections in traditional face-to-face university settings, I have introduced the first posting assignment on the first day of class, making it due before a later session the same week. In any case, the pacing of the subsequent postings depends upon other class activities. The sequence described below has typically been spread over the first half of the class (3-7 weeks, depending upon the acceleration of the course), leading up to the point where students submit a formal topic proposal for their culminating class research project (as noted above).

4.3. Discussion Board Logistics

[11] The postings are conducted on four separate discussion boards (or forums, depending on the platform), and each board corresponding to a movement in the orchestrated discussion. The first threads (or topic posting) in the first movement are initiated by the instructor, but later ones are created by students, reflecting the discussion topics they found interesting the first movement. The posting instructions for both initial thread postings and later response postings are explained in full on assignment sheets, which also have a one-to-one correspondence with the movements in the orchestrated discussion. Where appropriate, the forums themselves contain initial postings created by the instructor, either a directive posting (repeating the prompt explained on the assignment sheet) or a model posting (or both).

4.4. Developing Conversations

[12] After the first movement begins, later assignments ask students to review earlier postings and process them in a meaningful way, in some cases, by replying immediately to postings that catch their interests, in other cases, by analyzing their classmates’ postings and developing that analysis into an opening post in a subsequent movement of the orchestrated conversation. We review the work on the discussion boards weekly (usually within web-conferencing sessions or at the live meeting) until students start drafting their final papers after the last movement in the discussion. Throughout, the instructor contributes opening model messages to set a benchmark for the contributions during each round of postings. However, instructors can also reinforce exemplary participation and thoughtful student writing with short affirmation posts. These need not be long: a simple “good observation!” on a message or two can go a long way towards showing the whole class that the instructor does not just view the discussion as “busy work.” The only round of discussion for which I give every student a response is the topic proposal in the final movement of the discussion.

[13] The assignment sheets and discussion boards in the diagram above cross the lines for each of the four movements because students typically refer back to the preceding discussion in developing their initial posting for the next and because the first discussion actually starts before the first week’s class meeting. Simply put, the development of each movement of the orchestrated conversation involves a reprocessing of earlier posts, and so students will still be reviewing, maybe even responding to, previous discussion boards as they compose their posts for the next. This directed reviewing and reworking of topics and themes is, of course, the distinctive feature of orchestrated discussion, especially as implemented through counterpoint postings. The table below gives details about the types of postings assigned in each movement of the discussion, and the accompanying video gives full examples of posting prompts illustrating the types of prompts associated with the different genres of postings used in orchestrated conversation.