https://www.googleforeducommunity.com/t5/Arts-Humanities-GFG/The-Classroom-Versus-the-Screen-Preserving-the-Magic-of-Shared/m-p/260730#M13 <P>I'm happy to dive into this topic, and I'd love to hear how others are tackling asynchronous online discussions.</P><P>Personally, I found the most success with asynchronous online discussions (I used Canvas as the LMS) when I moved away from text-based prompts and made them creative. Full disclosure, I was teaching a core curriculum course on critical visual analysis (it was not a traditional art history survey). When I started teaching, I constructed my online discussions as if they were mini-papers. Essentially, I was looking for a formal, academic response to a question I didn't have time to address in class. This led to reviewing many paragraphs of stale writing and a lot of overlapping sentiments. It wasn't fun for my students or me, and peer replies were largely based around external motivators instead of intrinsic curiosity (i.e., I will only get credit if I respond to two peers).</P><P>I decided to change my approach to discussions entirely. First, I made them creative. Given my own limited artistic abilities, I wanted to offer creative introductions to big concepts in the course that didn't seem daunting and didn't require hours of sketching. Second, they were preludes to a topic, not a low-stakes summative assessment that concluded a section in the course. This allowed me to gauge prior knowledge, incite curiosity, and allow my learners to forge personal connections to the material. Last, I connected core terminology and actively drew upon contributions multiple times in the course to show the significance of their posts beyond the activity.</P><P><STRONG>What this looked like</STRONG>:</P><UL><LI>A "critical selfie" discussion before our section on portraiture.<UL><LI>Each student was invited to upload a selfie. They were asked to consider costume, posture, composition, staging, accouterments, gesture, and expression.&nbsp;</LI><LI>For those who did not wish to upload a selfie, they could describe how they would construct their selfie.</LI><LI>Students were invited to respond with their interpretation of the personality that was conveyed in the selfie, highlighting specific formal aspects of the composition that stood out to them.<BR /><BR /></LI></UL></LI><LI>A "create your own still life" discussion before we discussed still life painting and naturalism.<UL><LI>Each student was encouraged to construct a still life with objects they had easy access to and could arrange following a unifying theme. Students were encouraged to offer potential titles for their peers' compositions and discuss the formal elements that stood out to them.</LI></UL></LI></UL><P>For both discussions, it was imperative to highlight our community standards for respectful, appropriate, and critical exchange in our discussion topics. I truly saw the majority of my students enthusiastically participating in the discussion posts and willingly engaging each other in discussion throughout the semester.</P> Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:52:45 GMT JoeyW 2026-07-13T19:52:45Z https://www.googleforeducommunity.com/t5/Arts-Humanities-GFG/The-Classroom-Versus-the-Screen-Preserving-the-Magic-of-Shared/m-p/255165#M11 <P><SPAN>When we move literature, history, or philosophy discussions into fully online, text-based discussion boards, we often lose the immediate energy of a live classroom—the shared silences, the spontaneous debates, and the collective "aha" moments. How can we design asynchronous digital spaces that actually capture the raw, unscripted human connection of studying the humanities together, rather than letting them turn into sterile checklist exercises?</SPAN></P> Fri, 26 Jun 2026 17:51:25 GMT https://www.googleforeducommunity.com/t5/Arts-Humanities-GFG/The-Classroom-Versus-the-Screen-Preserving-the-Magic-of-Shared/m-p/255165#M11 TracyAntonioli 2026-06-26T17:51:25Z https://www.googleforeducommunity.com/t5/Arts-Humanities-GFG/The-Classroom-Versus-the-Screen-Preserving-the-Magic-of-Shared/m-p/260730#M13 <P>I'm happy to dive into this topic, and I'd love to hear how others are tackling asynchronous online discussions.</P><P>Personally, I found the most success with asynchronous online discussions (I used Canvas as the LMS) when I moved away from text-based prompts and made them creative. Full disclosure, I was teaching a core curriculum course on critical visual analysis (it was not a traditional art history survey). When I started teaching, I constructed my online discussions as if they were mini-papers. Essentially, I was looking for a formal, academic response to a question I didn't have time to address in class. This led to reviewing many paragraphs of stale writing and a lot of overlapping sentiments. It wasn't fun for my students or me, and peer replies were largely based around external motivators instead of intrinsic curiosity (i.e., I will only get credit if I respond to two peers).</P><P>I decided to change my approach to discussions entirely. First, I made them creative. Given my own limited artistic abilities, I wanted to offer creative introductions to big concepts in the course that didn't seem daunting and didn't require hours of sketching. Second, they were preludes to a topic, not a low-stakes summative assessment that concluded a section in the course. This allowed me to gauge prior knowledge, incite curiosity, and allow my learners to forge personal connections to the material. Last, I connected core terminology and actively drew upon contributions multiple times in the course to show the significance of their posts beyond the activity.</P><P><STRONG>What this looked like</STRONG>:</P><UL><LI>A "critical selfie" discussion before our section on portraiture.<UL><LI>Each student was invited to upload a selfie. They were asked to consider costume, posture, composition, staging, accouterments, gesture, and expression.&nbsp;</LI><LI>For those who did not wish to upload a selfie, they could describe how they would construct their selfie.</LI><LI>Students were invited to respond with their interpretation of the personality that was conveyed in the selfie, highlighting specific formal aspects of the composition that stood out to them.<BR /><BR /></LI></UL></LI><LI>A "create your own still life" discussion before we discussed still life painting and naturalism.<UL><LI>Each student was encouraged to construct a still life with objects they had easy access to and could arrange following a unifying theme. Students were encouraged to offer potential titles for their peers' compositions and discuss the formal elements that stood out to them.</LI></UL></LI></UL><P>For both discussions, it was imperative to highlight our community standards for respectful, appropriate, and critical exchange in our discussion topics. I truly saw the majority of my students enthusiastically participating in the discussion posts and willingly engaging each other in discussion throughout the semester.</P> Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:52:45 GMT https://www.googleforeducommunity.com/t5/Arts-Humanities-GFG/The-Classroom-Versus-the-Screen-Preserving-the-Magic-of-Shared/m-p/260730#M13 JoeyW 2026-07-13T19:52:45Z