We often hear teachers say, “I want students to have free discussion, to articulate whatever they want to say through online forum or the like.” At first glance, this senses perfectly fine. Students are give a lot of freedom and control; they are granted the opportunity to direct learning to their interest or in their own pace. Then I begin to wonder, what’s the pedagogy behind the “free discussion”?

The arguments for the “free discussion” might be that the topics forced onto students might not be interesting or meaningful for them. That will confine their opportunities for self-directed learning. The compulsory online discussion, inevitably, will generate empty, meaningless and shallow pieces.

However, empowerment itself can’t guarantee the quality of students’ work. Students will not become intrinsically motivated once they get more control. A problem associated with the “free discussion” is the clueless students. They might have no idea what to write about or to discuss about. Or the online posts might be on such diverse topics that it was hard to have a focused and on-topic discussions. In many cases, voluntary participation is equivalent to no need for participation. Students usually will not interpret the voluntary participation as an opportunity for them to take initiative and ownership of their study. They interpret the task as something less important or unnecessary. Otherwise, why the teachers make other assignment required, but not this one?

All in all, something “nice-to-have” is very hard to sell to students. They can be too busy or to lazy for something that is not “need-to-have“.