Student-Led Online Discussion Assignments

As an instructional designer, I developed the student-led online discussion assignment to encourage active learning, engagement, and motivation, promote student agency, facilitate deeper engagement with course content, and create opportunities for richer discussions. Student-led online discussions involve having students (1) present a relevant artifact (e.g., news article, works of art) in video form to discourage the use of GenAI, (2) pose thought-provoking follow-up questions, (3) moderate the online discussion, and (4) post a synthesis of and reflection on the discussion in written or video form.

I presented on the topic of student-led online discussions at a roundtable at the American Association of Adult and Continuing Educators (AAACE) conference and as a poster at the University of Pittsburgh’s Teaching and Assessment conference.

These assignments are described in the poster, assignment prompts, and a few artifacts are provided in the Show and Tell section below.