tools and tips for managing class with multiple section specific discussion boards
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I'm looking for insight and tips for how to manage discussion boards for a 140 student class I'm teaching.
The class has 6 sections and to facilitate student comfort and allow the similar questions to be asked in by the same student (but in different sections) I've been running the discussion boards split by discussion section. There's about 2 discussion boards/week (so 12 separate boards/week for the entire class) and I ask students to create 2 new threads and respond to 2 classmates threads every 2 weeks or so (140 threads and 140 responses to review/week -- yikes no wonder this takes forever).
Student engagement is pretty good, but I need a way to efficiently address similar questions across multiple discussion boards otherwise I'll either spend all of my time responding to student posts (liking good questions, good responses, clarify misunderstandings) or I worry students will eventually view it like a pro-forma exercise and/or believe incorrect answers.
Does anyone know of any tools that allow one to create and/or interact with a database where I can create, and retrieve my responses for the discussion board within a browser framework? I'd like to not have to keep switching back and forth between a browser and a text editor to search, select, copy and then swiutch back to a browser to paste and edit? Or is my only option to I just learn keyboard shortcuts for switching between applications?
