Webwatcher: how to make good use of discussion forums

I often use the forums in Edmodo, Moodle and Facebook onteacher training courses. These programs all offer the chance tocreate asynchronous chats and discussions. However, I oftennotice that teachers lack ideas about how to make good use ofdiscussion forums with their students. This article will focus onsome of the activities I have come across or done myself to getthe students engaged in discussions and forum activities.

Setting basic rules

It is worth drawing up some rules when students work on forums.With higher-level classes, you could get the students to createthe rules themselves. Introduce the term netiquette* and talkabout the rules you need to establish about working together.

Maintaining consistency

I would also suggest being consistent in the way you usediscussion forums. It might simply be a weekly activity that thestudents do at home. Or you could perhaps have two or threeregular forum activities going during the week. I have even metteachers whose schedules clearly show precisely what activitieswill be taking place on their forum every week. For example:

Monday – Last week in the news
The students each write 20 words about a news item.

Wednesday – This week in history
The teacher focuses on one event in history, which the studentsread about and comment on.

Friday – Let’s make it personal
The students discuss a weekly question posed by the teacher (orother students).

Linking the discussion forum to the class

It is a good idea to bring the discussions back into class. Forexample, you might summarise the posts, highlight the best‘Post of the week’, or get one student each week to review theweek’s posts and do a quick presentation. This will encouragethe students to get more involved and to appreciate that it is akey feature of the class.

I also suggest that you contribute to the forums. Your weeklytask might be to write about an event in history that occurred inthat week. You could then encourage your students to commenton your post. You might have something like ‘Word of the week’where you introduce a word for the students to learn. You couldhighlight one item from the news, one personality in history, etc.Try to make it a regular ‘Feature from the teacher’ and, again,make a point of referring to, or even using, the posts in class. Thelink between what you do online and in the class is vital. It can’t beseen as simply a side event that the students can ignore.

Personalising it

Personalising the chat can be nice. This was quite a successfulfeature on a Facebook project I reviewed in Chile. Each week,you might give (or ask the students to provide) statements forcompletion, like these:

Reacting to it

Reacting to a picture, video or short text is a great activity. Again,this can be a regular feature. You could also use audio. Forexample, the students might be asked to listen to a podcast andthen comment on it. Using news podcasts especially made forstudents can work well.

Interviewing a student

I have seen student interviews work really well. One good twist isto nominate a student to take the role of a famous person orhistorical character for the week. The rest of the class have towrite questions, and the student does their best to answer them.You can even do this as a ‘20 questions’ game. One student is amystery famous person, and the rest of the class have up to 20yes/no questions to find out who they are.

Brainstorming

It is not always easy to brainstorm ideas in a forum. The studentswho begin first tend to write lots of things, and then the rest havenothing to write. Try limiting the activity. Here are some exampleswhich will result in pretty comprehensive lists, built up by all thestudents collaboratively:

Name two things you find in the kitchen/bedroom, etc.
Name two foods you consider healthy.
Name two things you hate eating.

Using it for assessment

You can easily make ‘Communication on forums’ part of yourassessment. It doesn’t have to be big part of the total mark, butthe fact that it features in your assessment process helps to getthe students engaged and encourages them to focus on thediscussions.

At the heart of all this is ‘buy in’. Where discussion forums tendto be successful, it is because the teacher has committed to theforum and slowly got ‘buy in’ from the students**.

* Useful information about netiquette:
www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-onlinelearning-mastering-online-discussion-board-facilitation.pdf

** A useful summary about the research into educational forums:
www.studentpulse.com/articles/414/using-online-forums-in-language-learning-and-education

Materials

Good sources for pictures:
www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/albums

Two useful sites where you will find news stories:
www.newsinlevels.com/
www.breakingnewsenglish.com/

Russell Stannard is the founder ofwww.teachertrainingvideos.com,which won a British CouncilELTons award for technology. Heis a freelance teacher and writerand also a NILE Associate Trainer.

Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell:[email protected]