Use Forums for Discussions and Other Class-Related Activities

You see a lot more activity if you start the forums and post the first discussion topic. Adding your input to discussions is also valuable because it shows learners that you're engaged and are reading their postings. If learners find replies interesting and useful, they're more likely to get involved in the forum discussion.

You can make forums a required task as part of the course and assign grades, points, or scales. Moodle pushes the marks straight to the grade book, which ensures participation.

Set up a forum leader/monitor, or let learners take turns and share the responsibility. You can set up a rubric (a set of rules for assigning grades for scoring) and give learners capabilities to rate or grade postings.

The following list details other ways that you can creatively use forums to keep your learners engaged:

• Debates: Use forums to set up debates among schools, organizations, courses, or within a course.
• Role-playing: Set up a forum around characters and use the character to role-play. You can set up courtroom dramas, election scenarios, plays, or major historical decision-making exercises. Learners then have to learn all about the character to be able to take on the persona, answer questions, and debate issues from his or her perspective.
• Storytelling: Ask learners to take on a character persona and contribute to discussions using the persona of the character.
• FAQs: Forums can be set up as FAQs or question-and-answer discussions in which everyone can answer.