Paperless Collaboration

Here's what I am most proud of for the week:

Moodle Forums for Paperless Collaborative Writing

This could the title for an academic paper.  I think it might be some day.  Hmm...

Okay, so in the grad class that I teach, we have them read online articles between sessions.  In the forums on Moodle, they have to post an original thread for two articles and reply to two others.  For the first round, I jumped in many times to add questions and spark more communication.  

I copied and pasted the contents of one thread into a Word document, where learners usually type papers.  I formatted like a paper-double spaced, 12 point Times, etc.  

FOUR PAGES!!!

Eight different learners collaborated with 12 separate comments to create a four page paper.  Now, imagine the resistance if I were to assign a four page paper every week.  And what good would it be.  It would be just the learner and me reading it.  One perspective versus another perspective. 

Four collaborative pages.  I love that!  And my voice was a very minor player in the discussion.

Moodle forums for collaborative discussion.  Awesome!!!