Teaching an International Distributed Discussion-Based Course

Small discussion-based courses pose several challenges. Low enrollments make the course difficult to justify and can restrict active discussions. Impromptu discussions are hard to encourage. Students come to class tired, not well prepared, reluctant to speak out, or not able to verbalize abstract thoughts fast enough to fully engage. Sometimes a few students dominate the discussions while other students stay silent. This paper describes a novel teaching model that was created to allow one professor to teach the same course at multiple universities. As the course design emerged, the asynchronous online distributed nature of the course turned out to not only solve the initial problem, but also other challenges of discussion-based courses. Instructors and students found this model led to more engagement, increased learning, and higher performance.