Designing online forum activities for engagement and learning

As an educational designer, I hear this question a lot - Why aren’t students engaging with my forum posts? It can be disheartening in online or blended learning environments when students don’t engage with the thing that you designed for engagement! But maybe further consideration about your strategy and the design of your forum is needed.

Creating a Community of Inquiry

First and foremost it is good practice to consider your engagement strategy holistically, especially in online and blended learning environments. While these environments offer many benefits to students, they don’t provide the same access to incidental opportunities for connection that may be available in face-to-face learning. Therefore, moments of connection must be intentionally designed.

Purpose of discussion forums

If discussion forums form part of your engagement strategy, it is important to consider the specific purpose of each forum, especially in the broader context of the unit. An often identified ‘purpose’ of discussion forums is to increase engagement and provide an avenue for collaborative learning. Social constructivism states that meaning is made through collaboration and negotiation with others; hence for learning to occur in online discussion forums they must be places for discussion and debate (Gani & Van den Berg, 2024). In practice, this means that if the purpose of your forum is to provide an avenue for collaborative learning, then the forum prompts need to be designed to foster debate and discussion; not just a single correct or incorrect response. 

Another purpose of a discussion forum is to foster peer relationships and build a sense of community in the online and blended learning environments (Ouariach et al, 2023). However in order to do so it requires cohort engagement; which can be the problem in the first place!  In this case, introductions which invite the student to engage affectively (emotionally), through sharing something personal, can help build that connection amongst the cohort and support the development of social presence.

Finally, one of the simplest yet most successful types of forums are those used for support or to answer student questions, such as Q&A forums (Gani & Van den Berg, 2024). These types of forums have a specific benefit that motivates student engagement, i.e. the student will get an answer to their question! They can be set up to support a specific learning activity or assessment, or more broadly as a student-led space to use however they wish. While they are valuable for their specific purpose, they don’t necessarily promote higher order learning; which is fine, if that’s not your intended purpose.

2. Explicit communicative strategies

The educator provides specific guidance for learners on how to communicate in the forum depending on the purpose, for example:

• Establishing a positive social space - using names and acknowledge specific parts of learner responses. These strategies might be used in early introduction forums.

• Building collective understanding - rephrase, extend ideas, and present alternatives.

• Constructing new knowledge - challenge ideas and justify a position.

3. Interactional scaffolding by the lecturer

The educator engages in techniques to scaffold learning through:

• Modelling communication behaviours in the forum/s

• Maintaining a presence in the forum/s

• Instructing, by providing clear direction and organisation in the set up of the forum

• Steering, by prompting, focusing, questioning, and clarifying

4. Clear expectations for participation

The educator provides clear expectations including:

• Participation requirements

• Grading & marking requirements (if applicable)

• Number of responses/ posts required

• Type of writing required (i.e. academic with references)

Other considerations to support engagement in online forums

Consider how you measure ‘engagement’

• Educational technologies at Monash have many different ways to measure engagement, so consider that in the set up of the forum to ensure that you can get an accurate representation of engagement. For example, Moodle activity completion, or Panopto views.

Use principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

• Implement multiple means of engagement and/or representation by posting in different media formats (audio/video) and encouraging learners to engage using different media formats.

Consider how your learners engage with their learning material

• Does your cohort move through the material at their own pace or are they all moving through the material at the same time? This will likely affect the level of engagement you get throughout the semester.

• Set up the expectations regarding when you will post so that the learners can fit the activity into their learning schedule. Perhaps you consistently post on the same day every week or perhaps you post at the end of each module. 

Consider using other applications

• Often Moodle forums can seem quite formal to students, so if the purpose is to build social presence you might want to explore other options for online discussion such as Padlet, Miro, Microsoft Teams, etc…

To summarise, discussion forums can be an effective way to promote engagement in online and blended learning environments however consideration needs to be given to the purpose, design, and implementation of the forums. If you are struggling with engagement, consider how forums are embedded into a larger Community of Inquiry framework within your unit and make the necessary changes to ensure that they are meaningful additions to your teaching and learning approach. Feel free to reach out to our Educational Design and Support team for further guidance (med-eds@monash.edu

For more information about strategies for developing engagement in each of these presences, read the full paper - Fiock, H. (2020). Designing a Community of Inquiry in Online Courses. 

Carmen Sapsed - Educational designer, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Science

References:

Fiock, H. (2020). Designing a Community of Inquiry in Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(1), 135–153. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i5.3985

Gani, F., & Van den Berg, G. (2024). Cultivating awareness: A framework for online learning in open distance learning. Open Praxis, 16(1), 54–69. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.T2024030500022201425836273

Ouariach, F., Nejjari, A., Ouariach, S., & Khaldi, M. (2024). Place of forums in online communication through an LMS platform. World Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology and Sciences, 2024, 11(01), 096–104. https://doi.org/10.30574/wjaets.2024.11.1.0042

Verenikina, I., Jones, P., & Delahunty, J. (2017). The Guide to Fostering Asynchronous Online Discussion in Higher Education. University of Wollongong. Book. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uow.27801123.v1