Online Discussion Tools: 5 Apps and 4 Things to Do to Engage Your Students

One of the hardest things you face as a teacher is building a classroom community where relevant conversations happen and all students are engaged in thought-provoking topics. Unfortunately, the ideal scenario and reality may be totally different.

How many times have you asked your class a question and nobody responds? You may have had students averting their eyes, avoiding eye contact, or waiting, in uncomfortable silence, for your next move. There may be only one volunteer that raises their hand or, in a worst-case scenario, you may simply move on without any student participation. If you are particularly concerned about this issue, please check out this blog article on how to use questions effectively in the classroom.

Getting every student to take part in a discussion is a challenge, whether you teach in a classroom, online, or in a hybrid setting where some students are in the class and others join from home. Technology can help. Online discussion tools give every student a voice at the same time: shy students can answer a poll from their phone, the whole class can brainstorm on a shared board, and students at home can join in exactly like their classmates in class. Used well, these tools help students build conversation skills, share their opinions and feel that their ideas count.

In this article, I will introduce some online discussion tools and strategies you can use to boost participation in your classroom, both in person and in hybrid lessons. When I talk about online discussion tools, I mean web-based, mostly free tools that let you and your students run interactive discussions, share ideas and content, and work together on collaborative activities. All your students need is a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone.

Let’s start with four easy strategies to get your students responding:

4 Things to Do

1 – Create online polls

Polls are one of the quickest ways to involve the whole class. In the classroom, students answer from their own devices and the results appear instantly on the board; in hybrid lessons, students at home vote on exactly the same question as their classmates in class. Video and chat platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting and Webex have built-in polling features, so you can launch a question in a couple of clicks whenever part of the class is connected remotely. Microsoft Teams also keeps chat, meetings, files and assignments in one place, which makes it a practical hub for a hybrid class.

Launching a poll is a great way to start a discussion: ask students to vote, show the results, then ask them to explain their choice. Used in the middle of a lesson, a poll also gives everyone a moment to reflect, and it helps you see at a glance what the class has understood and what needs more time.

2 – Create discussion breakout rooms

Small-group discussions promote collaborative learning and give every student more time to speak. In the classroom, this simply means splitting the class into groups with a clear task and a time limit. In hybrid lessons, breakout rooms let you do the same online: students at home can work together, or join classmates in class who connect to the call from their own device, and you can move between groups to listen in and support the discussion. Small groups work especially well with introverted students, because speaking to three classmates is far less intimidating than speaking in front of the whole class. You can find breakout rooms on videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and GoToMeeting.

If you want to explore this topic further, check out our course on online collaborative learning.

3 – Use chat function

A chat gives every student a way to contribute, not only the ones who raise their hands. In hybrid lessons, the chat of your video call puts students at home on the same level as those in the class; in a face-to-face class, you can open a shared chat or backchannel that students reach from their own devices. Use it for brainstorming and warm-up activities or, in a language class, to practise writing by asking students to describe a picture or a video they have just watched. As a bonus, the chat gives you a written record of each student’s participation.

4 – Use external quiz apps

Quiz apps such as Kahoot, Wayground and Quizlet are a fun way to spark discussion and participation, and they work the same way in the classroom and in hybrid lessons. You set up the quiz in a few minutes and share a code: students join from their phones, tablets or laptops, wherever they are. To turn a quiz into a discussion, pause after each question and ask students to explain why they chose their answer. Kahoot is the most popular option thanks to its lively, game-show style. Wayground (formerly Quizizz) lets students work at their own pace, connects to Google Classroom and has gamification built in. If you want to know more about game-based learning, check out our course on how to make educational activities more effective through gamification.

Quizlet lets you track your students’ progress over time and add your own content. All three platforms offer free plans, and students usually don’t need an account: they just enter the code you share. They are intuitive and quick to learn, for you and for your students.

5 Apps to Use

1 – Padlet

This tool is great for sharing digital content and to foster student engagement. With Padlet, you can create brainstorming sessions and invite your students to discuss topics or share files, ideas, pictures and other visual aids. With this tool, students can create a portfolio or a presentation to showcase their projects or work through links.

2 – Socrative

Socrative is a smart student response system that helps you engage and manage your students and classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games. You can involve your students in collaborative activities by creating chat and discussion rooms or building online quizzes featuring the most interesting topics from the lesson. Your students will have fun with interactive activities and friendly competitions.

3 – NowComment

This is a free online discussion platform that allows students to mark up and discuss texts. You can upload documents and create online discussion areas. Any sentence, paragraph, image, or video can have multiple conversations. You can control when students comment on a document and when they can see each other’s comments. Anonymous posting (moderated by you) can also be set up, which can decrease the fear of public judgment throughout a classroom. Students are also allowed to upload their documents, presentations, or group assignments on this platform.

4 – Kialo

This is a free platform that was specially designed for classroom use. Kialo is useful to promote online discussion through debates and the mapping topics function. You can host classroom debates, where students can put their knowledge into practice, develop their own views on classroom content, and consolidate what they have learned. You choose a topic, and students pick their side (pro or con) and add their own opinions via “claims”. Each of these claims can in turn branch into subsequent claims that support or challenge them. You can give your students feedback, suggest improvements and ask questions in the comments.

On this platform, students can easily collaborate with each other to improve their arguments, examples, and phrasing.  This platform encourages students to work together to find the best way to express their ideas, as a matter of fact, everyone has a voice and space to explore topics at their own pace.

5 – Mentimeter

This is an interactive presentation tool that turns any lesson into a two-way conversation. You create a question, show it on the board or share your screen, and students answer from their phones using a simple code, with no account needed. Their responses appear live as word clouds, rating scales, open-ended answers or rankings, so the whole class can see what everyone thinks and you can start a discussion straight from the results.

Mentimeter works especially well in hybrid lessons, because students in the class and students at home answer the same question in exactly the same way. Responses can be anonymous, which encourages even the quietest students to share their opinions, and the Q&A feature lets students send in questions at any time during the lesson.

Conclusion

All the tools presented in this article are easy to use, but they work best when you set clear expectations for participation. Start by telling your students what good participation looks like in your class: for example, listening to others, building on a classmate’s idea instead of just repeating it and, in hybrid lessons, keeping camera and microphone ready so students at home can join in as easily as everyone else.

These simple rules are a good starting point for student engagement. Whichever tool you choose, remember that it is there to support conversation, not to replace it: the goal is to get students talking to each other, in the class and online.

Online discussion tools are no longer just for distance learning. In the classroom, they give every student a voice; in hybrid lessons, they make sure students at home are part of the same conversation. If you want to explore this topic further, check out our course on how to increase student engagement in the classroom and online.

Which of these tools have you already tried in your classroom or in hybrid lessons? Which ones would you like to try next? Let us know in the comments below!