The Dilemma

A Dilemma
Definition. The dilemma in one of my previous units was presented when the lecturer announced that in order that the discussion board would be used by everyone, he would make it compulsory to post at least 6 discussions, or fail the unit. There were 800 students in this unit and by the end of the first month there were over 900 posts. Most of the posts were unimportant and not worth the time to read. The dilemma was whether to use and read all these posts to follow the course or give up and spend my time more fruitfully studying at my own pace and handing in the assignments.
Assessment of the problems showed that
most of the posts were of poor quality with respect to knowledge, references, new ideas and critical debate
There were too many posts and they would take too long to read them all
These posts did not enhance my learning
They took time away from reading, researching, study and assignments
My options
Ignore all the posts
Ignore some of them
Just post my six required
Debate the problem online with the students and the lecturer
Limit myself to half an hour a day
Select a few people’s posts that I had come to respect, particularly those from the lecturer
Find a technological process to screen
Just do a little bit every night to catch up

4Action Taken
I found that a combination of actions was best. I discussed the issues in the forums and got reasonable feedback from others that they were having the same dilemma. The lecturer also acknowledged that the mandatory posts had worked better than he thought and he recommended that we limit reading and posting to a set timeframe and number of posts, learning to screen them quickly to establish if they were worth reading .I limited myself to half an hour a night so that I could fit in all the other things I needed to do. I found a way of expanding the files so that there was little waiting time for posts to be retrieved and displayed on the screen.

5New Knowledge
Finding the expand process on the files was useful as was discussion with the peers and lecturer about time management and use of discussion boards to aid learning

6. Provisional trying out new ideas
I tried a few of the options and evaluated their usefulness

7. Building self-confidence
I learned how to select useful posts , links and debates. I feel confident scrolling down posts and selecting those I am interested in and wish t gain knowledge from

8.As time is in short supply, I have learned to see discussions as an adjunct, like a real-time classroom. Interactions are a springboard to new ideas but you can’t listen to all the conversations. Discussion boards are good places to seek help just as in real life. That help is available and where to find it, remaining engaged in the community but not the center of all the action, is a life skill for other aspects of life.