【Teaching Practice Report】

Synchronous Online Discussion Forums as a Supplement toVideo Discussions in an Online English Discussion Class
Jonathan Hennessy
Abstract
This paper details the use of a synchronous online discussion forum activity as a supplemental activity used alongsidevideo discussions in an online English discussion class. A rationale is provided for the choice of activity as well as
the decision to have students participate synchronously. The author reflects on the progress shown by students intheir forum discussions and considers ways that the challenges that were observed could be addressed in future
implementations of the activity to allow for greater opportunities for learning. The author also considers the potential
influence that participation on the online discussion forum may have had on the ability of the participants to genuinely
interact with each other in their video discussions. The author concludes that the activity did help students learn tointeract with each other and functioned well as a preparatory activity for their video discussions, but did not observe
an impact on their turn-taking ability or their ability to discuss each other’s ideas in their video discussions.
Keywords: synchronous online discussion forum

Introduction
All first-year students at Rikkyo University are required to take an English Discussion Class(EDC) designed to improve their ability to discuss contemporary topics in English with their peers(Hurling, 2012). Since its inception, the class was always taught in person and students were expectedto participate in face-to-face discussions on a topic provided to them each lesson, allowing for the lesson
to be driven by student-to-student interaction. However, in the Spring 2020 semester, the lessons were
taught entirely online due to the spread of the novel coronavirus in Japan. Concerns about students’
access to the technology required to participate in extended online video lessons meant that manyteachers split their classes into two groups. This allowed each group to have a shortened video lesson
taught synchronously on the Zoom platform supplemented with other activities that students would
be expected to complete independently.
When choosing an activity to pair with the video lessons on Zoom, many teachers ended up
selecting an online discussion forum activity. This allowed the activity to still include student-tostudent interaction and to be targeted at improving the ability to have discussions in English. Whileusing online discussion forums in place of face-to-face discussions is not truly an equivalent exchange,
the use of online discussion forums has been observed to be beneficial for speaking skills (Satar &Özdener, 2008). Coffin and Donohue (2014) also assert that the structure of online discussion forums
allows for fluidity similar to that of a conversation, further supporting their use in a discussion class.
Using online discussion forums also provided the teacher an opportunity to use some of theirbenefits to address challenges previously observed in the EDC and in Japanese learners of English.
Students in the EDC have struggled with turn taking in discussions (Young, 2015; Hennessy, 2020).
Hennessy (2020) also observed that intermediate students struggled with discussing ideas introducedby other speakers, noting that instead of collaborating, they would share multiple ideas in one speaking
turn and fail to take further turns on a given topic. Williamson (2019) suggested cultural influences65

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may drive Japanese speakers’ difficulties with turn taking and Young (2018) suggests pedagogicalintervention may be necessary to address these issues. Online discussion forums are inherently
interactive activities and Murphy (2004) found that, while learners would usually start by only stating
their own perspectives, they would eventually progress to responding to the perspectives of others.
In addition, Coffin and Donohue (2014) suggest that discussions on online discussion forums tend
to move away from the starting issue and into other ideas presented by the participants. If this holds
true, then the online discussion forum could be a powerful tool to help students learn to collaboratein their discussions.
Of course, using an online discussion forum would still present issues that would need to beaddressed. Uneven participation can be a significant drawback to using forums, with the discussions
being driven by a few active participants while others contribute little (Coffin & Donohue, 2014), andstudents often find that their contributions to the discussion forum are left without a response (Coffin& Donohue, 2014; Thomas, 2002). While the expectation may be that discussions should naturally
move away from the starting topic, it is likely that if students frequently do not receive a response to
their comments that this drift may not happen. As EDC classes are small, usually 10 students or fewer,
uneven participation could also lead to a struggle for interaction if too few students are active on theforum. A lack of responses could lead to the discussion forum reinforcing the students’ struggles with
turn-taking if they adjust by sharing more information in a single post, further reducing the chancefor collaboration. This means that it is necessary for the forum activity to feature an emphasis on
interaction and replying to classmates to encourage genuine interaction.
While discussion forums are usually asynchronous activities (Abrams, 2003; Shenker, 2019), with
Shenker (2019) in particular noting the advantages of allowing more flexibility and time to think andplan contributions to the forum, there is some evidence that synchronous use of computer-mediatedcommunications can be more beneficial for increasing the quantity of output in face-to-face interactions(Abrams, 2003). One could also speculate that synchronous participation could reduce the impact ofvaried schedules on participation and could even help reduce the number of posts that do not receivea reply as it would be less common for participants to add comments after other participants had
stopped using the forum. Japanese learners of English have been observed to question the extra workrequired to participate in an online discussion forum (Nielson, 2013) and as the students in the EDC
were participating in online lessons due to a global pandemic, not by choice, I believed that asking
them to participate during normal class times as opposed to asking them to fit more work into the restof their schedule might help improve participation.
This paper reflects on the use of a synchronous online discussion forum activity with three
10-student classes of intermediate learners of English in the Rikkyo EDC. It considers both thedevelopment of their discussions on the forum using the Blackboard learning management system,
and any impacts the forum may have had on their spoken discussions on Zoom. The focus for thesemester was specifically on improving student-to-student interaction and collaboration both on the
online discussion board and in their spoken discussions on Zoom.

Discussion
Procedure
The synchronous discussion forum activity was used in 11 of the 12 lessons during the semesterwith the only exception being the first lesson, where students were only asked to post a self66

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introduction. In each lesson all students joined a Zoom meeting at the beginning of the class to allow
an opportunity for the teacher to give feedback from the previous lesson and to explain the focus of
the lesson, including both the topics of discussion and any target language that was being introduced
or reviewed. The entire class was together for approximately 10 minutes before being split into two
equally sized groups. Each group would participate in both an online discussion forum activity using
the Blackboard learning management system, and an interactive video lesson using Zoom. One groupbegan on Zoom where they practiced the target language and participated in a spoken discussion
before moving to Blackboard to complete the online discussion forum activity, whereas the othergroup would have the same lesson but in the opposite order: participating on the forum before theZoom lesson. The Zoom lessons were approximately 40 minutes long and students were expected toparticipate in the online discussion forum for 45 to 50 minutes. I would review the discussion forum
from the group that started with that activity before they began their Zoom lesson to give any feedback
that I believed would help with their video discussion and I gave advice to the group that began on
Zoom to help them in their discussion forum. The groups did not change between activities in a single
lesson but were shuffled week-to-week to allow students to work with all of their classmates over thecourse of the semester and to experience using the discussion forum both before and after the Zoom
lesson. This also addressed a common student complaint about online discussion forums mentioned
by Shenker (2019) regarding the inability of students to change groups during the semester.
The discussion forum was set up prior to the start of class with between four and eight starter
threads about a topic similar to the one that would be discussed in the Zoom lesson, and based on
one of the discussion preparation activities from the in-house textbook, “What’s Your Opinion.”
These starter threads were refined throughout the semester to help encourage discussion and, by
the end of the semester, I made the decision to limit the forum to four starter threads as it seemed
to increase student-to-student interaction. In general the discussion board was intended to be a free
discussion based on these starting topics and the role of the teacher was to set expectations, checkfor comprehension before the activity began, and provide feedback when it was finished. As it seemed
like most students began the semester with little to no experience in using a discussion forum inthis way, it was critical to be clear in setting expectations and goals for the students to ensure active
participation and to encourage interacting with their classmates’ ideas. Feedback was tailored to eachgroups’ strengths and weaknesses to ensure that they understood when they were succeeding andwhen there were areas that could be improved.
Students were given a period of time during which they were expected to continuously participate
in the forum, and they were given a post count goal for each lesson starting approximately halfway
through the semester. While it was not expected that all students would reach the goal in every
lesson, and their grades were not reduced for failing to reach the goal, it was a useful benchmark
to help students understand the expectations regarding participation. Students were also explicitly
instructed to begin by sharing their own ideas and then to interact with their classmates by agreeingor disagreeing, asking questions, and answering questions directed at them. This was emphasized
throughout the semester to encourage students to allow their discussions to move away from only
answering the initial questions, as supported by Coffin and Donohue (2014) who suggested online
discussion forums often drifted away from the starting topic, and to help reduce the number of posts
left without a response as was observed by both Coffin and Donohue (2014) and Thomas (2002).

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Early Reflections
At the beginning of the semester students struggled with turn-taking and interaction in their
Zoom discussions as expected and described by Hennessy (2020). They would often share theiranswer in a single speaking turn and would rarely speak again on a topic after another student took
the floor. Few students responded to ideas brought up by a classmate and even fewer would do so ifthey had already taken a turn on the topic. This was especially clear when students left disagreements
or different opinions entirely unexplored. In one Zoom discussion students were discussing whether
it was easy or difficult for university students to be independent and, while four of the five participants
agreed that it was difficult, the fifth disagreed. However, after that student shared their differing
opinion the group moved onto the next question rather than exploring the difference of opinion.
The online discussion forum activity also had issues with unbalanced participation, and there waslittle genuine interaction early in the semester, as Coffin and Donohue (2014) and Thomas (2002)
had previously documented. In early lessons it was not uncommon for one or two students to havedramatically fewer posts on the forum than their classmates, and students frequently shared theiropinions on a topic and then did not write anything else in that thread. For example, in one class four
students replied to the forum thread asking if they thought that going to university after high school
was a good idea and shared their opinions but none interacted with their classmates’ replies, despite
sharing similar reasoning. However, the discussion forums did provide some examples of attempts
at genuine interaction early in the semester as well. In the same lesson that students were discussing
going to university after high school they also discussed getting a full-time job instead. Two students
were observed trying to interact with each other’s ideas in the following exchange.
Student A: I think it is not good idea. It’s mainly because we can’t study enough until high school.
Student B: I agree with you. But there are many people who can’t go to university or vocational
school due to financial reasons. What do you think about those people?
Student A: I think those people don’t have to go to university or vocational school. But, if they don’t
want to get a fulltime job and want to learn more, their parents should give them some support.
While this was only a basic interaction it was an example of students learning from eachother’s ideas and replying to new information presented by other speakers even after stating theirown opinions. Early feedback was centered around identifying examples of success like this to help
students understand what success looked like, and students were praised for interacting with theirclassmates’ ideas on the discussion forum and in their video discussions. Missed opportunities werealso brought up to help students see when they had chances to improve.
As the semester continued students did seem to increasingly be capable of having more in-depth
discussions, especially on the discussion forum. In the fifth lesson students were discussing the topic
of being homesick when working abroad and had two separate comment chains stemming from one
student’s initial reply. In one chain the original poster had a back-and-forth conversation with one
other student about how they were able to overcome homesickness in an experience traveling. In
the second chain (included below) three more students joined in to discuss how the types of foodavailable in a country they were visiting could impact their ability to adjust to living there.
Student A: I have been abroad two times. First is Country A, where I felt homesick because of foodsof there. Second is Country B. I didn’t feel homesick so much, so I think I wouldn’t be homesick if I

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lived and worked abroad.
Student B: Why do you think you didn’t get homesick in Country B?
Student A: First, staying Country B was homestay between two weeks, while Country A was 1
week staying in university and hotel for studying culture and language. I could communicate withhost family deeply. Second, I didn’t hate foods in there more than Country A’s. However, there weresome foods I wasn’t able to stand. By the way, what do you think of my idea?
Student C: I think Country A’s foods use many Chinese medicine, so you couldn’t get use to theirfoods
Student D: I agree with you. On the other hand, I heard Country B’s food is easy to get used to.
Student C: But I like Country A foods, because I think it’s smell is bad, however taste is good.
In all three classes that were observed, this kind of extended interaction became increasingly
common in the online discussion forum activity but was rarely seen in Zoom. In a few cases I was able
to provide feedback based on successes in an online discussion forum activity and see students attempt
to talk about their classmates’ ideas in the following Zoom discussion. However, this behavior did notcontinue beyond the lesson in which the feedback was given, which suggested that the improvementson the forum were not helping in the video discussions.
Unfortunately, while I tried to focus my feedback on praising successful interactions, a large
amount of feedback in the early lessons had to be focused on participation as it was common to findsome students participating actively for the duration of the activity while others would simply post
their own answers and then stop participating. While this was expected based on the research, thediscussion groups being capped at a maximum of five participants meant that poor participation fromany students could impact the ability of other students to have meaningful interaction due to theoverall reduced activity.

Setting Goals and Making Adjustments
As the semester continued I felt that many students were making significant progress with their
discussions on the forums but still believed that poor participation from some members was an issue
that wasn’t being resolved by the feedback I was providing. In the fifth lesson several students in one
class made 10 or more posts on the discussion forum while another student had only five and yet
another student had only two. It was also common for some students to begin the activity immediately
while others did not make their first post until 10 or 20 minutes later. This not only impacted theperformance of the less active students but gave the students who were participating actively fewer
opportunities for interaction. Starting in lesson seven I provided each class with a goal for the numberof posts they should try to make during the activity to address this problem. This goal started at
10 posts and was eventually raised to 12. I also included a goal of asking at least two questions inthat lesson and added other goals related to answering questions and agreeing or disagreeing withclassmates later in the semester. Setting this clear expectation for students did seem to help improveparticipation in these classes. All observed classes increased the total post count following theaddition of a goal. One class increased from 113 total student posts to 120 in the first lesson they were
given a goal, and to 136 in the following lesson. Another class increased from 101 to 128 to 136, andthe third class increased from 81 to 82 (with one student being absent and thus lowering the total
number of participants for the lesson) to 106. In addition, in the first week that the goals were added
only three students of the 29 who were present had seven or fewer posts, while the minimum was six.
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Participation generally remained at this increased level throughout the semester which allowed me
to focus my instructions and feedback on the goal of genuine interaction.
Following this improvement, it became easier to find examples of interaction on the online
discussion forums and to encourage students to continue this behavior. Noticing how students often
built their replies entirely on the information presented in the original post without trying to movethe discussion to a new idea led me to try an activity where each student was asked to write only one
sentence per post. This activity did increase the number of questions students asked but they still
usually let the student who made the original reply lead the direction of the discussion by answering
those questions, as opposed to building on the ideas themselves. Later, I focused my feedback onwhich sections of their discussions would be interesting to discuss further to attempt to help themspot missed opportunities. This had more of an impact as students began to try to add interesting
information to their classmates’ ideas, especially on the online discussion forum. In one group, allfive students chose to participate in the thread discussing whether giving more vacation time wasa good way to improve the work-life balance of employees. They allowed the discussion to drift alittle, mentioning laws about vacation time in Europe, wondering if too much free time was boring,and showing concern for economic issues if workers had too much vacation time. The excerpt here
demonstrates how this group’s discussion developed:
Student A: I think Japanese people don’t have enough vacation time than other countries.
Student B: I think so too, but having so much free time is boring, isn’t you?
Student A: Surely, we may be boring, but many of Japanese workers have only two week summer
vacation. It is short for me. How about from your point of view?
Student C: I also think Japanese summer vacation is too short for workers, but if it becomes longer,
workers maybe don’t want to work (more) than now.
Student B: I think if workers don’t work, they can’t live, so after all they will work.
Student C: What you said is true, however in our society has a hikikomori or NEET problem, how
do you think about it?
The drift of topic from work-life balance to a concern about excess time off leading to an
unwillingness to work was only one way that this forum post evolved but still demonstrated
significant improvement from early in the semester. In a different lesson another class was discussing
the advantages and disadvantages of social media as it related to news and information and had adiscussion about the relative importance of the ease of access to information as it compared to thedangers of finding false information. They were able to continue this discussion by asking for potential
solutions and bringing up the necessity of media literacy to deal with the problems created by social
media. These improvements continued, and by the end of the semester I was fairly satisfied with thediscussions that students were having on the discussion forum.
Another realization came later in the semester when it became clear that students were having
more in-depth discussions when they were given fewer overall topics to discuss. When they had
an excess of options for discussion they tended to have superficial discussions about all of theoptions, whereas when they had fewer topics to discuss they would ask more questions and share
more information about each. Following this realization all of the forums were limited to four starter
threads. Following this change the discussions seemed more consistently interactive and interesting
but unfortunately, the change came too late in the semester to evaluate exactly how the discussions
improved.
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Impact on Spoken Discussions
As students improved on the online discussion forum it was possible to look at their video
discussions on Zoom and to look for potential parallels that could indicate a positive effect comingfrom what they were learning from the forum. Early in the semester it was clear that students were
struggling with both the video discussions and the forums and, while I was hopeful that the forum
would help students to have more interactive discussions simply due to how discussion forums
worked, that wasn’t the case. While the forums were always able to serve as a reasonable warm-up
or a place to practice something that was difficult during the Zoom discussion, it was necessary tohelp students build up the skills for successful online forum discussions before they could have any
carryover to their video discussions.
Towards the end of the semester it did seem that students were showing more interaction on
both the online discussion forum and in the video discussions. One group had an excellent video
discussion about the use of robots and artificial intelligence as solutions to the problem of Japan’s
aging population. They discussed the benefits of reducing the work needed to be done by humans,considered the negative of lost jobs, brought up examples of service industry jobs that were alreadybeing done by robots, and generally had an interesting interactive discussion. However, this was nota consistent improvement among groups. My notes from one of the final lessons for another classshowed that students were having great, interactive discussions on the forum, but in video discussions
they were still answering questions and then not speaking again until the topic was changed. This
inconsistent improvement in video discussions, contrasted with the more universal improvements inthe online discussion forum, makes it unreasonable to suggest that the success in the forums was acause of the improvements in their video discussions.

Student Feedback
In the final lesson, the discussion forum activity focused on the students’ opinions of the activity.
In general they seemed to think that the forum was useful as preparation for their spoken discussions
and that they were able to think of more ideas and get a better understanding of their classmates’ ideas
by discussing on the forum before having their spoken discussion. This may not be any different fromhaving another speaking activity for discussion preparation, but it was good to see that students did
find it helpful.
More interestingly, some students also felt that the discussion forum allowed them to have
deeper discussions than they were able to in their video discussions. One student wrote that they did
not have to worry about the timing when discussing in the forum and another student noticed thatthey often participated for a much longer time than in their video discussions. Some other students
wrote that they were able to take more time to understand their classmates’ ideas and explain theirown ideas which made it easier to interact with each other on the forum. Other students found taking
turns more difficult on the forum, noting that sometimes the discussion would move on while they
were writing their opinion and they would feel like they contributed too late. When combined withother frustrations expressed by the students such as losing track of comments, struggling to findunread comments, and posting the same idea as someone else, it seems likely that students’ lack offamiliarity with using online discussion forums in this manner impacted their ability to make the bestuse of the forums. However, the positive points such as being able to discuss more deeply on theforum also suggest that it may be possible to use this activity in the future to emphasize this behavior

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for video or face-to-face discussions. While students did still struggle with turn-taking in their video
discussions this semester they may still have improved in their ability to discuss a topic more deeply
from the online discussion forums. While this may be in part due to the added challenges of having
their discussions online instead of in person, it also means that more teacher intervention would benecessary to create carryover between the two activities.

Conclusion
Over the course of the semester students did improve in their discussions using the online
discussion forum and they self-reported the ability to learn from each other and interact with eachother’s ideas on the forum. While students struggled with many of the issues common to discussion
forums such as uneven participation (Coffin & Donohue, 2014), posts without replies (Coffin &Donohue, 2014; Thomas, 2002), and early attempts being dominated by comments limited to thestudents’ own perspectives (Murphy, 2004), they improved significantly in response to instruction
and feedback. While many of the improvements that students made to their forum discussions would
have also been a positive change in their video discussions, there seemed to be little transfer between
the activities. It was not clear if the forum activity had any impact on the video discussions beyond use
as a preparatory activity.
As an option to allow for student-to-student interaction while face-to-face interaction is limited,online forums did seem to be an effective tool for teaching some of the key parts of discussion andbuilding up the ability of students to discuss contemporary issues in English, as is a goal of the
EDC (Hurling, 2012). This activity could be enhanced by improving instruction and setting goals totarget participation and interaction from the start, and by limiting the starting topics from the first
lesson. I would like to try this activity again with those adjustments and see if it is possible to see
success with the forums earlier in the semester and thus be able to draw on those successes to help
students develop their ability to take turns and interact more successfully in video discussions or faceto-face discussions. This could increase the value of the online discussion forum activity in a speaking
focused class such as the EDC.

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