Prior to the Spring 2020 semester, I used to use the Piazza platform for asynchronous communication among my students. However, they have since moved to a different economic model. They used to be free, but now there is a cost to either the institution or the instructor. The other alternative is that the students are frequently reminded to contribute. On top of this annoyance, the student-contribution model lacks certain key features such as the ability to lock the platform during an exam.
Thus, starting in Spring 2020, I began to seek alternatives. My first thought was the professional communication tool Slack which I tried during the Fall 2021 semester. However, this simply did not take off. I did not get the same level of engagement that I was used to with Piazza. When I polled the students, they mentioned that “it was just one more platform to keep an eye on.”
With this feedback in mind, I wanted to find something that would integrate with Moodle, the UMass Learning Management System. The “Enhanced Moodle Forum” (then in beta) seemed to meet the need, and I tried that during Spring 2021. However, participation was still not what I expected/hoped it would be.
In both of these fall semesters, when my official efforts at a asynchronous communication platform, were falling flat, my students independently setup a Discord server. In both cases, the Discord was more active than my official platforms. Thus, for the Fall 2021 semester, I decided to try Discord. Most of my students were seemingly already on it. As I investigated further, I discovered WidgetBot (https://widgetbot.io/). This bot allows for a Discord server to be embedded within another webpage. Folks can even comment directly from the webpage without a Discord account. Discord + WidgetBot, therefore, seemed to meet all my needs: an asynchronous platform that students will actually use and can be embedded within Moodle thereby reducing the number of platforms students must check. The result, screenshot below, has been quite successful.
