What is a Debate Thread?
In a Debate thread, you can have students debate the pros and cons of a topic. This is similar to the Argumentative thread I mentioned earlier where the teacher gives the students a controversial topic to discuss. In the Argumentative thread, students voluntarily choose whether they want to argue the pro/con side of a topic. However, in a Debate thread, students are assigned whether they are pro or con. The teacher has the option of assigning individual students pro and con or the teacher can split the class in two and assign one half of the class as pro and the other half as con. Students then have to work together in their groups to argue the pros and cons of a topic.
What is a Peer Review Thread?
In a Peer Review thread, students peer review/look over each other's rough draft papers. Students provide constructive criticism on whether or not the paper has a central theme/idea/thesis statement/weaknesses and strengths in student arguments and/or grammar/mechanics mistakes. I always advise students to post early during Peer Review week so that other students have time during the week to post feedback for your rough draft. If you post the same day you hand in your final draft, you get no benefit from the Peer Review Week Thread and you lose points for not participating during the week. Not only do other students peer review your paper, but you also get to peer review other student papers too. Also, if you post early, I get a chance to look over your paper to see if you have any essay structure and/or grammar mistakes you can correct and integrate into your final draft.
What is a Citation Thread?
Warnock uses the this thread to help students learn MLA. He gives students MLA citation exercises to do to help them learn MLA. If students are making arguments or points in their Debate or Argumentative threads, he requires students to use the correct MLA in their forum posts to practice MLA before they write their paper. Better to make mistakes in MLA in forum posts for the teacher to correct in a low stakes grade like a forum post says Warnock, than in a high stakes grade like your final paper. Practicing MLA in a low stakes grade assignment like a forum post gives the teacher the opportunity to correct student incorrect/correct MLA posts. I used to catch a lot of student MLA mistakes in this way.
The most common mistake is that students confuse MLA with APA. Most other subjects outside of Humanities like Social Sciences and Business use APA. So I am able to catch MLA/APA confusion when I use Citation threads like this.
Now some teachers argue against using Citation in forums and say that forums should just be left for conversation and that citation exercises should be an assignment for the assignment portal. I am neutral on this. I think it is good to use forums just for conversation and I think it is just as good to use forums for citation exercises. To me, it all depends on the needs of the school and its students.
What is a Summary Challenging Reading Thread?
Warnock has his students read a scholarly paper or a scholarly article that is difficult for students to read. He then has his students summarize this difficult reading in the Summary Challenging Reading Thread. Now to prevent this thread from becoming a series of mini essays of the same reading, he gives his students options for a series of different readings. Students are responsible for reading the previous students' posts to make sure he/she does not choose the same reading as another student and /or not repeat what another student said about a reading/summary. Each summary must be different from another student's summary and must add to the conversation. Only the very first student to post gets to write whatever she wants because nobody else had posted yet!
Another way to do this thread is if the teacher assigns a LONG challenging paper, all the students can do the same paper, but different students would summarize different pages of the same paper. Once again, students have to make sure they don't summarize the same thing as the previous student. And make sure that different students don't summarize the same page. It is the students' responsibility to make sure they summarize different pages of the long challenging paper.
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