Whether you are starting from scratch or working with a discussion forum already created, using the forum activity in a topic ideally consists of 5 stages, in a looped process.
Forum and Announcements are the same activity. However, you do not need to add a discussion forum for Announcements as this activity will already be set up in your topic. The difference between Forum and Announcements is that announcements are for teacher use only –
students cannot add a discussion post or reply to an announcement. When you set up a forum in your topic, students can interact with you and other students.
Announcements are a way of generating social presence/active teaching in your FLO topic. You can provide information to all students using the 'Latest announcements' block on the topic homepage. This is handy for important information (eg changes to lecture/tutorial times, assessment reminders). Remind your students to check their emails regularly.
Forums enable participants to have asynchronousdiscussions (ie discussions that take place over an extended period of time). Discussion forums provide opportunities for social presence and can foster a community of practice in your FLO topic. Participation in the forum could contribute to an assessment grade, and could also indicate problem areas. Participants can subscribe to a forum to receive notifications of new forum posts.
Good practice guides and tip sheets
Good practice guides and tip sheets have been developed to support quality in both curriculum design and teaching practice. Good practice guides provide a pedagogical overview and tip sheets provide you with practical strategies and ideas for implementation.
Links to fourm-related resources are provided below.
Announcements are a timely, active element in the topic – use them to post reminders, pose challenging questions, generate curiosity, answer a common FAQ, or respond to 'muddy points'. Announcements are posted to all enrolled students in
the topic within 30 minutes of posting (assuming that they have not disabled email notifications in their personal preferences).
Forum
Discussion forums can have many uses, formal and informal:
a social space for students to get to know each other (eg a 'student lounge')
discussing topic content or reading materials
preparing for an assessment item, or as an assessment item (this can reduce emails to staff)
troubleshooting (a great way to foster a community)
continuing online an issue raised in a face-to-face session
a 'help centre' where tutors and students can give advice
teacher-only discussions (using a hidden forum)
The forum's purpose will determine the type of forum you set up. For example:
Are you going to assess forum participation? | What type of forum will you set up? | Will you set up ratings in the forum?
Suggestions to help with planning:
Talk to teaching peers about issues around forum participation and assessment.
Decide what marks to assign to the forum (it could be a non-graded pass or a percentage).
Give students a rubric/marking guide that shows them what effective participation means – criteria could include originality, scholarly argument, type of interactions between students and demonstration of critical thinking skills (quality), as well as the number of posts and word length.
Decide whether to use peer assessment (ratings) – this approach could help create a sense of community and deepen learning:
Decide on the range of ratings (eg 5 which means students can rate each other on a scale of 1-5)
How might students give feedback other than just a rating? It might be to reply to the rated post saying why they think it is worth x, and their own response. This is forum etiquette anyway when replying to posts (‘I don’t agree with…’ etc) and helps develop a critical but constructive approach.
2. Build
Announcements
You do not need to build the Announcements forum activity as it will already be set up in your topic. It will likely be sitting in Module 0.
Forum
Forum posts can be rated by teachers or students (peer evaluation). Ratings can be aggregated to form a final grade which is recorded in the Gradebook.
You could ask your eLearning support team to check the settings for your forum, to make sure it serves the purpose you had in mind in the planning stage.
