Organization

Students can be frightened when they initially access the discussion area of your CMS (course management system) or conferencing software and see all the topics (forums) listed for the entire course. They may even decide to drop the course, simply assuming they won’t be able to keep up, without even knowing what is actually required. To avoid this reaction, and to organize your forums to maximize learning, keep the following in mind. These items will also create easy use and student interaction.

• Use the “timed release” formula – Allow the discussion forums to be seen by students only as they are introduced into the assigned work.
• List the most frequently used forums (like your office) at the top of the list.
• List currently used forums next, meaning when you move to the next unit, unit 2 goes above unit 1, etc.
• Use the same color to unify forums for each unit and differentiate them from “ongoing” ones or new ones.
• Label the forum exactly the same as you did in the instructions. If your instructions say to post in “Unit 3 Application”, make sure the forum is named exactly the same, not “3 app”. You can use abbreviations; just make sure the forum is labeled the same in both places, abbreviated or not.

Some CMS (like WebCT) allow you to link students directly from the assignment to a specific discussion forum to decrease confusion. Therefore designing effective question is half the battle, the other half rests in how you facilitate them.