How to make forums interesting
When you teach an online class, the most interactive part of the class are the discussion forms. This is the part of the class where students communicate with each other and where you have a chance to connect with students by sharing your expertise on a given topic. For me, the most rewarding part of teaching online is discussing class topics with my students in the forums. I love the interaction I get to have with students because teaching online can make a teacher feel isolated and alone, so interacting with students in the forums helps counteract that loneliness as students also feel isolated by taking an online class interacting in the forums helps teacher and students feel connected. It's through this constant interaction with students that the class and the teacher builds a learning community. Interacting in the forum also gives students a sense of belonging. I love to use the forums as a way to teach material and to make the readings and assignments come alive.
How do you make the forums interesting and challenging for students so that the forums can foster a sense of belonging and community?
1. Participate in every thread a discussion with students in the forums.
2. Give a personalized response to each student and do not reuse cut-and-paste posts from previous classes because students love personalized posts. Believe or not, students can tell when you cut and paste posts from previous classes.
3. Use the students name in each forum post and personalize the post by mentioning the students hobbies interests or career. Relate class material to student hobbies or career. Keep a spreadsheet of all student hobbies and interests so you can keep track of what each student is interested in and then tailor your forum questions accordingly.
4. Let students guide their own learning to make sure that you don't dominate the forum. You can have different students comment on what they read or have different students be responsible for different parts of the reading and that different groups of students would report a different parts of the reading. You can create student groups alphabetically for instance students with the last name A through C would read Chapter 1, students with the last name of D through G would read chapter 2 of the reading and each group would be responsible for the chapter that they read and for recording that chapter to the forums so in this way you make the students the expert of the topic and the students become the teachers. So, let students guide their own learning and you just be the "Guide by the Side" instead of the "Sage on the Stage". I will explain in more detail what these terms mean in a future post. But basically "Sage on the Stage" is a teacher centered approach to teaching while "Guide by the Side" is more of a student centered approach to teaching.
4. Encourage students to ask open ended questions at the end of their post. Students can ask each other the same open ended questions that the teacher would. I will go over what open ended questions students should ask each other in my another post.
5. You can also use role-play to make your forums more interesting. For instance, when I was teaching Literature classes, it was easy for me to stick in role play questions to students such as, "If you were Odysseus, what would you do to get home sooner? If you were Penelope and surrounded by all the suitors how would you fend off the suitors?" I used to love giving role-play questions when I used to teach literature.
5. Post fun games and or fun quizzes that students can do from the web. I used to post a fun fallacy quiz where students would recognize whether or not a certain statement is a certain fallacy and students used to love taking that quiz because the quiz grade did not count towards their final grade. It was just a fun quiz to test their knowledge. I would have students take the quiz and compare the quiz scores in the forums. So, post fun interactive games and quizzes that students can do from the web so that students can interact with the class topic. This kind of interaction is great for kinesethetic hands on learners. . Are used to post a fun fallacy quiz where students would recognize whether or not a certain statement is a certain fallacy and students used to love taking that quiz because the quiz didn't count towards the final grade it was just a fun quiz to test their knowledge. I would have students take a quiz and compare their quiz scores in the forums.
If you have any other tips on how to create engaging challenging forums feel free to comment under this thread.
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