At the beginning of a course, when students don’t know each
other very well, it is a good idea to use a discussion forum for students to
introduce themselves to each other .
Ask them to post a 100 word summary about themselves, with a
photo, by a certain date. Do a follow up activity, where they have to find two
people with similar interests to them and make a reply to their profile. (This
ensures that they read each others posts. The advantage of this is that it gives your students
a virtual identity - one of the
drawbacks of online communication is often the anonymity of it.
Setting some reading homework for your teaching group? Ask
your students to make a 20-50 word comment/summary on the Discussion Thread.
Choose a selection of these comments/or summaries to base your next lesson on. You can display
them on the IWB in the lesson.
The advantages of this are that it ensures that all students
do the reading and are prepared and also that you have some views to begin a
discussion on, in case there is a reluctance to comment.
Ask each student to provide a useful weblink and/or book or
article reference on a particular topic and post it on the discussion forum.
The advantage of this is that you can gather a lot of good
sources quickly without having to find them all yourself. You will have to moderate the links provided
however, and advise students which ones are useful.
Create a form of FAQ on a course by getting students to ask
key questions and get various tutors to respond. Create a separate discussion
thread for each question.
Advantages are that students can refer to these first,
rather than continually emailing individual tutors.
Use discussion thread for Peer Review. Ask students to post
drafts of their essays or assignments and then provide feedback for at least
two other students. Give them guidelines/criteria
to help them to do this, otherwise it can degenerate into a slanging match! In
fact it is a good idea to put them in small groups this tends to encourage more loyalty to group
members and it\u2019s easier to spot abuses.
Using discussion threads for small group work works well groups can use their group discussion thread
to post information they wish to share and collaborate on such as weblinks,
images, articles
Post a video or podcast on your subject
site and place a discussion forum next to it. Ask some specific, directed
questions on the forum for pupils to discuss.
