Fostering Academic Discussion Online

John Hattie’s meta analysis of educational research has identified high-impact instructional strategies. He has noted that if a strategy has an effect size of 0.40, when implemented effectively over an entire school year, students will gain one year of academic growth.

According to his research, classroom discussion has an effect size of 0.82. This means that when implemented effectively over a school year students should show more than two years of academic growth in a single school year. In order to reap the high return on investment relating to student academic growth, students must be trained on classroom discussion strategies. This was challenging enough prior to the shift to blended and remote instruction. In this article, teachers are guided through the process of effectively implementing class discussions both synchronously and asynchronously.