Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching - National University

However, it may be shaped in various ways. In the discussed course, the discussion board
consists of two parts.
Think and Answer
A week assignment includes four questions of the following types:
What is wrong about this statement
Examples:
• The United Nations Organization declared that the world’s six-billionth inhabitant was
born on October 12, 1999 in Bosnia.
• An auto dealership opened on February 28 and sold 2 cars on that day. During the whole
March, it sold 80 cars. The manager claims that they increased their monthly sales 40
times.
Explain in a paragraph or two.
Examples:
- We define probabilities for various normal distributions. However, we use one single
table (Standard Normal Distribution Table) for all of them. Explain why that is possible.
- Why cannot a confidence level be 100%
True or false
Examples:
- Health insurance policy is designed in such a way that a healthy person has a negative
expected value, and an ailing one has a positive expected value.
- A coin is flipped twice. P(two heads) + P(two tails) = 1.
If we fail to reject the null hypothesis, we reject the alternative hypothesis.
As can be seen from these examples, we tried to avoid questions that could be answered by
copying a paragraph from the textbook. The students are required to give a justified answer to
each question; not necessarily absolutely correct. Answer like “true” or “false” will not earn full
credit.
Open Forum
This part is intended for questions and answers concerning mostly homework assignments. In a
4-week course, it is especially important for the instructor to answer such questions promptly.
Besides, if one student has stumbled over a problem, so could others. Therefore, posting the
answer in this forum benefits the whole class.
The instructor’s answer should contain not the full solution of the problem, like in a
solution guide, but a carefully measured hint that gives the students the general idea and
direction, leaving the rest of the work to them. To do it without delay, it is very helpful to have a
bank of such hints. Certainly, this bank can be only created gradually, as the questions are
coming in, but it will serve as long as the current edition of the textbook is in use. Unfortunately,
the bank must be created from scratch as soon as a new edition was adopted.
We always encourage students to answer their classmates’ questions. This is one of the
most valuable activities in an online course. Those who do it receive some extra credit. Open
Forum in online mathematics courses takes on some of the functions of a chat room. The pace of
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