How I Bribed My Students Into Talking on Canvas Discussion Boards

Yesterday’s meeting featured the usual bureaucratic chestnut: making sure our online writing classes don’t devolve into glorified correspondence courses. The mandate was clear—students must get quick feedback from us, know how to contact us, have a tech-support lifeline, understand what materials to buy (not a $3,000 MacBook Pro?), and, above all, know the bare minimum of interaction they’ll have with their online peers.

That interaction lives on the Canvas Discussion Board, which we’re told is the beating heart of digital education. From hard experience, I know this: if I don’t attach points, those boards become ghost towns. Students treat “attendance only” discussions like spam mail. The secret motivator is points—no matter how meager. Even the stingiest point values light up student survival instincts. They’d rather wrestle with a tedious prompt than lose three points.

So here’s my new math for online classes:

• Three 1,700-word essays: 220 points each.
  
• Six building blocks (a.k.a. formative assignments): 50 points each.
  
• Eight Discussion Board prompts: 5 points each.
  

That’s the full enchilada: 1,000 points. Students stay engaged, the boards don’t wither, and I can claim my class is more than digital pen pals swapping files in the void.han digital pen pals swapping files in the void.