In our group’s blueprint, we have included a variety of different activities to help students learn the course we have designed, such as group discussions and quizzes. I think group discussion may create barriers for student success. First of all, we can not have face-to-face group discussions at this particular time, then we have to set reasonable times for students to have group discussions online. However, everyone’s time is uncertain, so they may not be able to participate in the group discussion at the same time. In this situation, we can use platforms such as the Brightspace discussion board to allow students to express their views on it, and then comment on other group members’ posts within a specified period of time.

The second potential barrier created by group discussions is that it is difficult to judge whether everyone in the group has mastered the concept that they should understand. For example, there may be someone in the group who does not participate or does not express their ideas in the discussion, and it’s hard for us to know if that student understands the concept that we provided. Therefore, we can firstly create a discussion guide to allow students to follow. For instance, we can ask students some specific questions about the discussion topic and allow students to answer each question on the discussion board. Then we can divide the grade of the group discussion into three parts. The first part is the score of participation in the discussion, and the second part is the determination whether students follow the discussion guide carefully and whether they answer questions completely. The last part is about whether the students have read the post of others carefully and whether they have given appropriate comments to others. Through these adjustments, we will reduce the barriers for students’ success.