Developing Online Discussion Forums to Promote Higher-Order Thinking

Alignment is critical from a Quality Matters standpoint and also essential for assessment purposes.  A sound course design begins with measurable outcomes and alignment of coherent activities to provide students with quality learning experiences.  This session concentrates on student success by combining QM and assessment topics as the facilitators discuss challenges, needs, and emerging solutions to engage graduate education students in their online discussion forums.  In this session, facilitators discuss research on online discussion forums and assessment of learning outcomes.  Also, participants utilize the revised Bloom’s taxonomy to evaluate course learning outcomes and create prompts for the online discussion forums which address higher-order thinking.