Our Story: WeDiscuz

Why do we exist? In this global pandemic situation, more and more students are forced to take online classes to complete their academic pursuits. This can be difficult for multiple reasons. Studying in an isolated situation from home is one of the reasons for concern. It can be emotionally draining due to inefficiency in communication. Students are feeling less engaged with the schoolwork. According to a survey involving 3089 college students conducted in May 2020 by Top Hat, one of the online teaching platforms, 78% of students think that online classes are unengaging. To solve this problem, the use of an online discussion board seems to be an effective choice. It provides asynchronous communication among students and instructors within a specific course. There have been many discussion platforms being used for online learning. However, students and instructors are encountering many inconveniences while using these services. One example is deadline management in Brightspace from Purdue. Brightspace provides deadline notifications for each course, but not in a comprehensive way, which means that students have to navigate between four or five web pages to check the schedule. It also poses some problems for distance learners in different time zones. Students have to calculate time differences every time, which makes checking the assignments more stressful. As online learners, our team members have experiences with some of the online platforms like Hotseat, Piazza, and Brightspace. We found that each online discussion has pros and cons.  To help make online learning easier for students and teachers, we plan to create a new discussion board platform named WeDiscuz that is able to combine the advantages of the existing platforms and add additional functions that can benefit online learning from other perspectives focusing on our consumers’ needs.