Shared Reading

How to do this 

This activity is designed to engage students in reading activities through the use of the discussion feature in Canvas. Follow the instructions below: 

Preparation

• Brief students about group reading activities, including expectations, detailed instructions and whether the activity carries any values towards the final assessment.  
• Set up rosters with allocation of responsibilities, such as discussion facilitator, note-taker and summary writer. Change the roles for effective participation.
• Identify reading texts for your modules, topics or blocks in advance. 
• If you have large classes, you may want to set this up using group features in Canvas so that all students have the opportunity to lead discussions. Follow these instructions on creating Groups or book a session with LX.lab for assistance.

Task

• Allocate one or more students to read a given text prior to an allocated week 
• Post reflection and discussion questions for the rest of the group members/class to respond to. 
• To promote interactions and social learning, ask students to make one original contribution and two additional contributions as responses to their classmates’ posts.  
• Create rules to make student engagement more meaningful. For example, students could be asked to link their comments to the course materials or assessments or identify where the information could be useful.
• Use summary writer posts at the end of the week to summarise the discussion. Students can identify and comment on the emerging trends or themes and key takeaways from the discussion.

After the task

• At the end of the week or the discussion, summarise the emerging trends or themes (if this has not been done by one of the students). 
• In your post, answer any questions or point to the issues that are not addressed or require your expertise. 

Example: instructions and guidelines for discussion

What tools can you use? 

The following technologies in this activity are supported by UTS:

• Canvas discussions
• Canvas groups

When and where to use 

Introduce at the beginning of the semester, and use weekly or as relevant. Suitable for:

• Block mode
• Social science, law, research subjects, literature review and courses with readings

How long will it take? 

What research tells us 

This activity is useful because it helps academics to enhance social presence by promoting learner to learner and learner to content interactions. By allocating responsibilities to students to lead discussion of the readings and assigning other responsibilities such as question-prompter, we can help to enhance learners’ ownership of the learning activities (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016). 

Activities such as setting up tasks, providing detailed instructions and summarising also help to enhance teacher presence (Pelz, 2010).

References

Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R.M. (2016). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips (2nd ed). Jossey-Bass. 

Pelz, B (2010). Three principles of effective online pedagogy. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 8(3), 33-46.