10 pedagogical tips on how to engage students in social based online discussion

The social nature of CN makes it a great tool for student-centered, authentic online discussion. In this article, we share 10 tips to help instructors engage students in social discussion and online community building. 

1. Share something that will make your students think, enjoy, or feel positive, such as a thought-provoking TED Talk, an informative article, or an encouraging quote.

2. Post notes to remind your students about upcoming class events as well as the submission deadlines. You could also upload necessary files to the CN Task tool, such as weekly lab report templates. These contents will create "reasons" for students to return to the discussion space. 

3. Encourage your students to post links to online resources, such as journal articles, news, and Youtube videos related to course topics, and share their reflections. This allows them to connect what they learn with the real world. They may also share their own work (photos, drawings, audio files, short videos, and documents). You can give extra points for this activity by setting up a course Anar Seeds goal. For example, 250 Anar Seeds count for 10% of the course grade. 

4. Suggest discussion topics every week. Think of 1-2 topics related to the current learning topic and invite everyone to discuss them. You may give students specific questions to guide their thinking and articulation, or provide general prompts such as "share anything you found interesting about...". Give these prompts through the CN Task tool or the Assignments tool in your LMS (when using CN Post). You may also select student leads to come up with weekly talking points and/or respond to posts. 

5. Allow and encourage the students to ask any question they have. If they don’t know how to solve a problem or tackle a project, they can seek help from peers. Ask students to use hashtag #Questions to label their posts so that you will be able to easily filter these posts and provide help.

7. Invite students to look into a topic and have initial reflections and discussions in CN, then, look at these posts during class time to deepen the conversation. This way, you will have flipped the class! Note: Flipped Classroom is a new instructional approach that has students learn a new topic on their own and come to class for more engaging and interactive learning. 

8. With younger students, such as first-year college students, when your course is entirely online, you may have them post about their weekly status/progress (status-check posts), then encourage them to give each other learning tips and encouragement. You can turn the social discussion space into a warm learning community where students feel connected and support each other. 

9. Use the Poll tool to survey students' opinions, seek feedback, and create pop quizzes before tests and exams. Students will soon pick the idea and create polls to engage with each other.

10. Tell students that they should view their CN participation as an experience to enjoy rather than an assignment to complete. It is an experience to have great conversations with their peers, to help and learn from each other learn, and to achieve new perspectives on what they learn in the class.

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CN Post Set-up Guide (for Instructors)