Online forum

Description

Forums serve as a less intimating platform for students to express their ideas. This feature enhances the interaction between teachers and students out-of-class. A forum works in similar ways as a virtual notice board. Communications between users of a forum are non-immediate in nature. Therefore, users do not have to be online at the same time. Rather, users go to a forum, read previous messages recording on it, start new postings, or reply to previous postings.

Implementation

The following are some tips on implementing

• Teachers are recommended to visit forums occasionally and to give brief feedback if necessary. Yet teachers have to intervene if help is needed. One way to ensure that forums run well is to assign students to summarize key ideas and questions on a weekly basis. A summary provides a concise record of important opinions raised by students which teachers might refer to for the benefits in future teachings.
• There are various documented cases on the use of forums in different area of studies, such as ice-breaking, exchange of ideas, collaboration on course projects, online tutorial discussion, peer critique, and even debate. Online forums facilitate activities at various stages of a course.
• Hong Kong students are often quiet in the classroom. Nonetheless, they are eager to express themselves online. Teachers might have had the experience of some ‘quiet’ students asking insightful questions after class or by email, and also giving brilliant answers in exams. It can be difficult to find out whether Hong Kong students are actively thinking about a topic in face-to-face situation. For this reason, online forums can serve as an ideal platform for students to express their opinions in their own time and style.
• The interface of a forum should be user friendly with regard to access and navigation. Teachers can also build a structured forum in which provides a clear instruction to the task and topics for students to consider. It is important for teachers to participate actively in a forum [but not to dominate in a discussion], so that students would get useful replies to their questions. Most importantly, there must be mutual support among students of a class, which enables the belief that discussing opinions in forums can be of real value for their learning.
• Students nowadays perceive online activities to be common in university education. There are more and more courses which allocate a small part of the assessment grade to online activities. In fact, one of the general comments that we received from students is they like online activities to be part of an assessment in their courses.
• Teachers must involve themselves in the online group discussion, and to give feedback when necessary. They should consider comments at times when they are most needed.
• Another common trap is with regard to the technical aspect of building an effective forum. Some teachers attempt to design fascinating materials which are technically difficult to build. Therefore teachers should be realistic in the developmental phase of creating online work.

 

Extended readings

Read more about the use of online forums in the following website:

Development of a comprehensive web-based learning system – PolyU.(n.d.). Retrieved from http://e3learning.edc.polyu.edu.hk/examples.htm

Social Networking in Plain English – Commoncraft. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc&feature=related