Once a generative question is developed -- one that includes much interesting room for dialogue and specific learning goals -- we look at how to frame the discussion activity in order to encourage the most dialogue possible without additional instructor intervention. Over time, a number of my colleagues and I have used a wiki to develop some ideas around how to frame discussion activities to optimize student interaction. Here is what we have so far: 

Discussion assignment template: (developed for week 6 math discussion)
 
Read your classmates' initial comments. Respond to at least two of their ideas in separate posts.  In developing your responses consider:

• What comments could you make or questions could you raise that would deepen or move the conversation forward?
• What among these posts was particularly helpful or interesting to you and why?
• What ideas require more clarification?  Pose questions that will help to clarify any points that are not clear.
• What insights did you gain from reflecting on this work through the eyes of your colleagues?
• What new questions arose and what questions remain?

A set of questions such as the above offers a variety of entrypoints. They may not stand alone very well, they are intended to be a combined set. The first one encourages contributions that add to the quality of the dialogue contents. The second one embeds complimenting ones' peers for contributions that helped others, building confidence as well as making intellectual connections. The fourth one is the "consumerist" entrypoint, and has value among others in that the additional comments offer a meta view that may spark additional thinking and connecting. The final one is a synthesis question that encourages comments that keep the dialogue open, rather than close it up as if exploration were complete.

Here's a stand alone:
 In developing your responses, think about how you can help our group deepen our connections between our work this week and classroom applications.

The following are some specific action-oriented prompts that will directly support co-construction of understanding or knowledge:
 
Identify disagreements - help with resolution
Identify commonalities, find common threads
Identify different approaches.  How many can we find?
Come to a consensus (this is a difficult assignment in a threaded discussion, but could be reflected in a collaborative product, such as a wiki)
Create a common list or statement or response to someone (a product)
Identify next steps, extensions, unanswered questions
Challenge ideas you think are not correct. - by asking questions.
If someone makes a claim but does not justify it - ask for justification   (I would change that one to:) Can you add any evidence that might help justify or refute a claim?
Identify problem solving strategies - look for new strategies.
Identify approaches (solutions, representations) that you had not thought of

Here's another stand alone:
Respond to at least two ideas included in the posts. In developing your response think about common threads and help to identify big ideas.

 We're still building our list. Have you found a framework that works in your context? Hope you'll share it here.

For online participants, here are a few things I do:   

* I make sure social community is established and people feel welcome and then   

* I “sit on my hands” in the public fora (so as not to interrupt the participants’ choices of direction) and     instead offer effusive praise and specific private feedback to participants who have made particularly rich contributions to the learning and growth of the community as a whole. I explicitly teach groupmembers how to engage in collaborative dialogue -- what they have done well and where they might improve.

My feedback reflects the goal of fostering a “community of inquiry" in which students actively listen to one another with respect, explicitly build on one another’s ideas (citing one another), challenge one another to supply reasons for otherwise unsupported opinions, draw out meanings in order to avoid making assumptions about commonalities or disagreements, assist each other in drawing inferences from what has been said and seek to identify one another’s assumptions. (Lipman, M. (2003). Thinking in Education. New York: Cambridge University Press).   

When I sense dialogue might wither without intervention, I post an intervention that is comprised largely of material drawn from participant postings, woven together in such a way as to highlight an intriguing tension between ideas, mirror insight in a way that might spark new insight, or triage argumentative comments toward more constructive directions.    

* I moderate as much as possible by not interrupting, but rather   

* by supporting, scaffolding and nurturing the ideas of others.   

* I do not address individuals publicly. Instead, I raise participants' ideas up for group consideration using community language (speaking to the group, for example, "Mary said...") rather than personal language (addressing only one or a few members).

These strategies I find work well for ensuring that participants feel heard and therefore remain invested – invested, that is, in continuing to push their own thinking and share it publicly with the group.

Sarah

My dissertation study: Tapping Online Dialogue for Learning: A Grounded Theory Approach to Identifying Key Heuristics that Promote Collaborative Dialogue Among Secondary Online Learners;

Two papers I presented on my study, one at E-Learn 2005 and one at AERA 2006;

A paper that summarizes my approach to facilitating online learning which is a prelude to my forthcoming book on the topic, also presented at E-Learn 2005: "Facilitating Deepened Online Learning: and 

My accepted proposal to the upcoming Sloan-C International Conference on Asynchronous Learning Networks, which also supports my forthcoming book.