Online discussion forums provide teachers with a way to get students critically thinking about the content. Teachers can pose questions and have students respond to the question and to each other's responses. Furthermore, upon reading a student's response, the teacher can pose another question to take the student's thought a little deeper. Thinking deeper about the content is every teacher's goal.
Assessing a discussion board has to be one of the most difficult parts of providing feedback for an online class. This quest provides some guidelines for facilitating an online discussion forum. First, teachers should respond to the first thread of all student responses in order to make sure the students are on the right track with what you want them to discuss. Keeping the scope of the conversation within the realm of the original question is important. Links to external websites to further the study are also helpful for students who wish to learn more about the topic.
Discussion forums can be very effective instructional tools. However, when teachers do not check the responses in the forum, then students can sometimes get very off task. Guidance and feedback is a must in order to maintain the credibility of the forum.
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