Education Commons^™

Full- Time, In-Class, Face- To- Face Courses...Why (Then) Online Discussion?, Maha Bali Phd, Adham Ramadan, Nagla Rizk

Faculty Journal Articles

Most of the literature advocating online discussions cite the main advantage as encouraging interaction for students who either see each other rarely (e.g. in mostly distance learning courses) or have insufficient time to interact in class (e.g. in large lecture halls). However, at AUC, some faculty are using online discussions, despite the relatively small class size, and the regular meetings every week. In this paper we explore two different cases of using online discussion at AUC across several semesters: one for an introductory environmental science course and one for an advanced economics course. The instructors outline their reasons for using …