Team 4 is Jean-Pierre Joubert, Christopher Rowe, Vanessa Tran and Eric Yu.
Over the past number of weeks, Team 4 has investigated developing a Community of Inquiry, or CoI (CoI framework, n.d.) using Discord (Your place to talk, n.d.). Specifically, we reviewed Konstantinou and Epps’ report regarding their implementation of Discord to develop a CoI within a first-year engineering course (2017). Discord, it appears, is a highly useful tool for education, allowing both synchronous and asynchronous communication, as well as storage of documents and information.
Based on our research we were able to developed a Genially (n.d.) presentation outlining teaching, social and cognitive presences within CoI, strategies to support discourse. In addition, the presentation contains a critical analysis of several key concerns with CoI, namely mandatory vs. non-mandatory use, data collection and privacy, as well as accessibility and identity. This presentation was then expanded through the use of video to incorporate audio explanations as well as closed captioning in order to provide a more detailed explanation of the content.
This information was presented to our cohort within the LRNT526 course (2021), along with a practical demonstration using Discord. While our cohort has been actively using Discord as a CoI for roughly a year, our Team demonstrated a more course-based implementation incorporating channels and bots during a breakout activity. A second, separate Genially presentation was created for use during this activity.
Overall, we found that Discord to be an excellent tool which meets the needs of a Community of Inquiry, with one of our Team beginning to use a similar implementation for staff within a Higher Ed context. Despite its effectiveness in this regard, there remain number of concerns remaining, namely Discord’s poor protections regarding user data (Discord privacy policy, 2020). As a result, we remain hesitant with its mandatory use within any course, instead recommending it remain an optional component. Informing students of the relevant data policies while allowing student choice over their personal information, in our estimation, critical. It may be that there are alternatives that may have more reasonable data policies. Further research is recommended in this regard.
(Edited to correct “Presentation References” title to “Blog Post References” on 5/13/21 @ 7:32 AM AST)
Blog Post References
Athabasca University. (n.d.). CoI framework. Retrieved April 10, 2021, from https://coi.athabascau.ca/coi-model/
Discord. (2020). Discord privacy policy. https://discord.com/new/privacy
Genially. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2021, from https://www.genial.ly/
Konstantinou, G., & Epps, J. (2017). Facilitating online casual interactions and creating a community of learning in a first-year electrical engineering course. 2017 IEEE 6th International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 128–133. https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE.2017.8252317
Your place to talk. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2021, from https://discord.com/
Activity References
The following references were provided by group participants during the activity regarding the use of Open Book and Closed Book exams.
Open Book Exams
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00463/full
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1092705.pdf
https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01347
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3357713.3384290
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1092705
Closed Book Exams
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.582.6810&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Video Presentation
Genially Presentation and Activity
Hi,
Thank you for the informative presentation. Discord has been a great tool for relationship-building and learning within our MALAT cohort. It’s too bad our instructors have missed out on some of the discussions. I wonder if instructor teaching satisfaction has decreased over the years due to these private group discussions? Have instructors felt more isolated from their students? I have noticed the moodle forum is used less. Are students privately emailing instructors more, creating an inefficient learning situation? Or perhaps, using Discord is a blessing for instructors because more students are able and willing to take an active, collaborative approach to their learning without instructor involvement?
During my undergrad learning in the nineties, my discussions with classmates were limited. I was more of an introverted learner and did not reach out to many classmates. I used math and science textbooks, solution manuals, and study guides to learn content. If we needed support, instructors had office hours and tutorials. But with these social media learning groups, it is easier for an introvert like myself to view and sometimes participate in discussions. Using Discord is a different approach to learning, and I am grateful it’s part of the MALAT experience. I wish the moodle forum were more like Discord.
Hi Wendy. Thanks for the comment. You raise some really great points.
With regard to instructors feelings on private group discussions, I’m curious too. Not being an instructor myself currently, I can imagine that it might be a difficult situation to find the line. On one hand, as far as Community of Inquiry, it’s great because the students are learning from one another as much as from the course materials. At the same time, it effectively stops the Instructor from being a co-learner in these instances while giving the students privacy to feel free to discuss things that might be difficult were the instructor present. If I could hazard a guess it would be that this is something that would be individual preference.
That said, as an introvert, I’d agree that I do find it more useful and (functionally at least) prefer it to Moodle’s Discussion forums. Having to login to so many systems is one of the drawbacks I’ve found with an open program … it’d be great if there was a Single Sign-On (SSO) between all these things so that we could always be connected. But, like you said, some sort of synchronous chat would be so much more effective than asynchronous forums. Apparently Moodle does have something like that, but it does look extremely simplified compared to Discord.
At the same time, I’m not a fan of Discord’s mobile implementation and how information gets lost in it … especially being on the East Coast, it’d be more useful if we had some sort of thread-based chat so that any replies were listed under the question, topic or discussion similar to Forums, Teams or Facebook. With a lot of the discussion being done during PST, and me being 4 hours ahead, I find myself quite lost in the discussions or just plain late to the party. So, personally, I’d prefer a different solution to Discord. (Honestly, I find I prefer Teams for the most part).