Establishment of an Engaged and Active Learning Community in the Biology Classroom and Lab with Discord.

Discord is an instant messaging platform that facilitates voice and video calls and media exchanges. Although Discord was initially developed for video gaming, it is currently used by other communities where voice chatting is frequent. Here, Discord is described as a useful tool in the science classroom. We implemented Discord in several biology labs and classes and gained experience using it as a professor (AW) and as both a teaching assistant and a student (SS). In this Discord-enhanced learning space, students seemed to be more engaged with the subject material, their peers, and their instructors in comparison with a more traditional physical classroom and an entirely online classroom. In addition, real-time communication was augmented in a physical lab or classroom by Discord's interconnectivity. Discord facilitated real-time peer and instructor discussion and provided opportunities for group interaction outside conventional science teaching spaces. These increased connections also extended to the lab setting, both in and out of scheduled class time, providing a space to build community within and between groups and between students and instructors. Introducing Discord to a physical classroom or using it for an online class provided us with opportunities for a more engaged and active student, and they found it may lead to greater productivity and learning.

INTRODUCTION

As most universities did, Mercer University found itself suddenly moving online in the middle of Spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The lead author (AW) wanted to create an online learning environment that was the most classroom-like, providing a perpetually active location for communication; encouraging and allowing collaborative, equitable group work; and intentionally establishing a sense of community during this difficult time. Although other online platforms existed for teaching, she chose to establish an online presence using Discord (https://www.discord.com) due to its unique collaboration features detailed below. She has since used it to teach exclusively online during the academic year 2020 to 2021, conduct online labs, and communicate with research students, and she continues to use it in her in-person classrooms from 2021 to 2022 (Table 1). The second author (SS) was a student in two of these classes and a teaching assistant (TA) in two others. With Discord, the authors have both found a greater sense of community in these classes than they had had before in physical classrooms and online courses alike. They also sensed that students seemed to be more engaged with each other as they witnessed interstudent communication surrounding the material and general university life through each class’s Discord.

TABLE 1

Courses taught primarily with (online, hybrid), or supplemented by (in person), Discord

Term	Level	Course	Sections	Students	Delivery method	2nd author (SS)
Sp 2020	400	Bioinformatics	2	30	Online	N/A
Fa 2020	300	Genetics	3	75	Online	Student
Sp 2021	400	Bioinformatics	1	24	Online	Student
Su 2021	300	Genetics	1	23	Online	TA
Fa 2021	300	Genetics	2	48	In person	TA
Fa 2021	400	Biochemistry	1	17	In person	N/A
Multiple/ongoing	Mix	Instructor-led Research	3	15	Hybrid	Student

Discord is a free service, accessible via a standalone app or through a Web browser, with access from a computer, tablet, or mobile phone. It was initially designed for gamers to voice chat while playing online but has since been adopted by many other communities to facilitate discussion, share ideas, and exchange resources. The service now allows video chat, screen sharing, and text communication. Direct messaging (DM) is possible between users for private conversations. Discord has been demonstrated to be a useful, digital learning platform during emergencies in K-12 education (1). Particularly during the COVID pandemic, Discord has been used in physics (2) and English foreign language classrooms (3). Students have found it to be accessible and have had positive experiences using it for multiple types of communication during online learning (4). Here, Discord was intentionally used in a novel manner in undergraduate biology lectures and labs for synchronous online classes and hybrid/in-person classes, both heavily relying on group work. More detail on all aspects addressed here may be found in Appendix 1.

In a physical classroom, students sit together to work in groups. The professor can give instruction, then move about the room, helping individual students while still being able to communicate with the whole class. This common space, with easy accessibility to the professor and fellow students, allows seamless communication between all parties. Discord’s environment, which provides a high level of accessibility for communication in real-time with text, voice, and video and with its ease of use described herein, is the principal reason the authors chose Discord as their online platform.

PROCEDURE

“Classroom” set-up

Discord communities are built as a “server” with defined, permanent text channels to direct the flow of communication. Here, each class (Table 1) was represented on a separate server. Within a server, classes were typically constructed to have two categories of channels: general and lab group-specific. Both categories also included text and voice channels. General text channels included #announcements, #general, #lecture_chat, #ta_chat (private), #tech_help, and #off-topic. General voice channels included “General,” used for class instruction and office hours, and “TA” (private, for the professor and TAs, here referred to jointly as instructors). Outside of general channels, one text and one voice channel were set up for each lab group, organized by course section (Appendix 1).

Creating community during online, synchronous class

Students used the text channel #lecture_chat to submit questions and comments during lectures, and a TA monitored the chat. An instructor occasionally posted figures or data here so that students could be directed to analyze them in breakout groups. During lectures, the professor also asked questions to which students could respond via chat. An instructor could give instant feedback by reacting to comments with specific emojis or marking comments needing follow-up conversations.

In Genetics, additional voice channel categories were created for breakout groups and peer review (Appendix 2). When students were in breakout groups, instructors could call them back by using the tag @everyone to alert them to rejoin the “General” voice channel. During breakout sessions, students posted responses requested by instructors in #lecture_chat. With other platforms, such as Zoom (https://www.zoom.us), there is no communication between breakout rooms or between breakout and main rooms. In Discord, students can interact with members in any other text channel to which they have access, and instructors can instantly move between voice channels to monitor students’ processes and progress.

Creating community outside class

Generation Z students are often more comfortable in online communities and with text chatting than previous generations (5). Indeed, instant messaging provides positive effects on first-year students' community, perceived quality of the course, and comfort seeking help (6). Students mentioned that Discord provided a more comfortable place to connect to instructors than a phone call or an awkward conversation over email. Students regularly DMed instructors when it was convenient for them but did not expect an immediate answer. These conversations were helpful to students because they were able to speak without the pressures of formality, making them more likely to seek help. In the author’s experience in over a decade of teaching (AW), approximately 1/10 of her students would seek help outside class before Discord was employed compared to almost every student seeking help through Discord. A DM chat could easily become a voice or video call when appropriate, with the easy add-on of screen sharing to draw on a virtual whiteboard, fulfilling the visual and video preferences demonstrated by some Generation Z students (5). Students also frequently asked questions of each other in #general, thereby getting help from peers without moving outside the platform. TAs could also answer questions, and therefore students did not need to wait for the professor to get help. All of this occurred outside scheduled class time. With this increased access, students got help faster and from a wider variety of viewpoints, and strict office hours were not needed. Additionally, the #off_topic channel provided a location for students and instructors to share non-course-related material and memes and for them to get opinions and help from others, contributing to a sense of community.

Learning about students

Watching students interact with each other, particularly their lab groups, was informative. Frequently, while meeting in a voice channel, students would post reminders of meeting times, self-assigned tasks, or questions compiled for instructors. They would also notify each other when they were delayed. Discord also allowed observations on students’ struggles, whether with content or in how to approach an assignment. Misunderstandings about concepts were revealed simply by reading messages students were posting in their lab group chats, and these misconceptions were quickly corrected by instructors before they were embedded in students’ minds.

Considerations for implementation

Class size will invariably affect the implementation of any online learning tool and should be considered when building a Discord server. Most successful live streams on any platform have a production team assisting with the technology and chat monitoring. It is difficult for a lead instructor to seamlessly monitor chat while teaching. Classes larger than about 25, therefore, benefited from a TA to moderate comments and discussion (Appendix 1). Canvas and Google Drive were also used for organized file sharing and peer writing.

Discord in an in-person class

The authors currently use Discord in an in-person Genetics class (Appendix 1). After its introduction, students used Discord for community engagement exactly as their online peers did, without prompting. Sporadically, students use it to write group reminders during lectures, and the professor uses it occasionally in class for polling and for groups to report quickly on progress. She also drops figures and data into the chat so students may discuss them with peers in class as directed.

CONCLUSION

Replicating the experience of a physical classroom in an online environment can be a difficult challenge. Here, the novel implementation of the newly expanded Discord platform in science lectures and labs provides what other, similar tools could not—it seamlessly integrates permanent and grouped text channels, DMing, both voice-only and video chat, and multiple screen sharing—all currently for free. Neither Zoom, Skype, nor Slack can do all of these tasks, therefore, Discord provides the environment most similar to a physical classroom (7). Zoom does not allow text conversations to be permanently accessed, Slack does not allow video chatting for more than two individuals simultaneously, and Skype does not have the capabilities to create multiple text channels and permanent voice channels for noncontacts. The framework and abilities provided by Discord, therefore, facilitate the building of community and engaged learning space, both exclusively online and in in-person classrooms.

SAFETY ISSUES

There were no safety issues because this technique only involved an online platform for class.