University of North Carolina at Wilmington Center for Teaching Excellence
UNCW Home · CTE Home · Events · Resources · About CTE 

 

Introduction to UNCW WebBoard

Location of demo WebBoard:
http://wb.uncwil.edu:8080/~video

How to get your WebBoard account:

  1. E-mail Steve Perry (perry@uncwil.edu) and request a WebBoard account.  If you are using this for a specific course it is probably a good idea to give the course information from the catalog as the name for the WebBoard account.  Please allow a couple of days for response.
  2. Make a link from your course page
  3. If you do not have a course page from which to link make sure you give the students a slip of paper with the address for the WebBoard

Reasons for using a WebBoard:

  1. Writing to learn
  2. Opportunity to communicate with guest discussion leaders
  3. Problem solving - Team Discussion
  4. Plain old discussion area
  5. Facilitates group work
  6. Collaboration - cooperative learning
  7. Attachments option allows students to exchange manuscripts or other works in progress

Evaluation of student performance:

  1. Etiquette
    1. No Profanity
    2. No attacks on person
    3. Topically relevant postings
  2. Grade by quantity but state explicitly that postings must adhere to quality standards, grammar, spelling, relevance to assignment.
  3. Spot read
  4. Students must make substantive statements.  Agreeing with someone else who posted previously makes for weak discussions.
  5. Points for participation.  Students will make little to no use of the WebBoard unless there is something compelling them to do so (points.)

Sanity saving recommendation:

Often in a large course it is impossible to do anything more than spot read the discussions.  Dr. Rick Dixon of the Sociology department here at UNCW has devised an ingenious method of getting students to do some of the grunt work for the professor.  Sound neat?  Read on.

Set up groups of five in a conference.  A leader is appointed on a rotating basis.  The leader is responsible for overseeing the discussion and composing a summary of the discussion.  The professor grades the leader.  Each participant in a conference is the leader at some point during the semester.  Participants can lose points for not participating.

Conclusion:

WebBoard is a tool not a method.  As you become more comfortable with the tool you will begin to see more ways to use the WebBoard.  Play with WebBoard and give CTE or Client Services a holler with any questions you might have.