Certificate in Online Education

Some of your students may not have used online discussion forums regularly, so they may need advice and help on how to use them appropriately. For example, a topic heading or subject like 'hi' or 'help' doesn't give other readers a clear idea what the message is about. Discussions may start to go "off-topic" and you need to guide the discussions back.

Don't feel that you need to respond to every message posted, forums are a good way for students to get peer support. So when a student asks for help on a forum, you may want to respond by asking if any other students know the answer rather than responding directly with the answer yourself.

Unfortunately, in rare cases, you may need to deal with very inappropriate messages. Hopefully this won't happen as your students should be clearly identified in their course and so they are unable to post anonymously. To help prevent this occurring, you can lay down some clear guidelines as to what is and isn't appropriate to post on your forums. These guidelines are often referred to as netiquette (short for "network etiquette" or "Internet etiquette"). You can find more about netiquette at: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html. If a student continues to abuse the forums, you may resort to blocking the user from accessing the course site.

Forums are an extemely useful way of communicating with your students, and there are 101 ways of using forums in your course. For example, in a blended course, you may ask students to give their thoughts or opinions in the week leading up to a lecture on a particular subject. In the face to face lecture you already have a good idea of the students level, ideas and possible misconceptions on the topic, allowing you to pitch your lecture at an appropriate level.