ONLINE EXPERIENCE Facilitating Discussion Forums

A face-to-face class discussion is a different experience than a synchronous online discussion, which is a different experience than an asynchronous threaded online discussion. Keep in mind that learners participating online have more time to craft responses. While in-class discussions are likely to be more dynamic, online discussions are more likely to be thought out and summarize key concepts.

Facilitating asynchronous discussion forums requires regularly reading and providing feedback on learner postings, encouraging participation, moving the discussion forward when it stalls or gets off track, identifying and drawing out areas of agreement and disagreement, pointing out linkages, and helping learners articulate shared understandings. It isnot necessary to reply to every post every learner makes in your discussion forum. Excessive faculty posting can preemptively close down conversations. The question becomes: how much is too much and how much is not enough?

Best Practices

- Participate daily during the time frame of the discussion by responding to, redirecting, or encouraging further discussions.
- Spread your comments out during the discussion forum to encourage learners to actively and consistently participate over time.
- Be mindful not to respond only to the same learners all the time.
- Model the type of comments you wish to see from your learners - avoid posting ‘I agree’ or ‘good job,’ in your responses.
- Plan follow-up prompts or questions for each discussion forum topic to engage learners further and continue the conversation.
- You can also pull together threads of ideas or themes that you see across several learners’ posts and make connections back to the course text or primary concepts. Include in your expectations/rubrics that learners are expected to respond to any additional questions you provide (not just respond to their classmates).

Using Groups for Discussion Forums

When classes are large, it can be cumbersome to have whole-class discussions. Breaking learners up into smaller discussion groups, either randomly or by interest area, can produce better dialogue. If you use groups, make sure to post a final summary of all group discussions in an announcement (rather than just a threaded response within each group discussion) to ensure that all learners will be able to benefit from your summary.

Bridging Face-to-Face, Synchronous Online, and Asynchronous Online Learners in Discussion Forums

Online forum participation can become an opportunity for traditional learner interaction as well. Interactions in the classroom can be made immediately available to synchronous online learners or can be archived for review by asynchronous online learners and connected to a forum discussion for ongoing engaged learning. Common forum assignments for all learners can be used to draw learners together in shared discussions throughout a course. The social connections from sharing in a discussion experience (even when reviewing an archive) can strengthen the learning community.