Experimenting with Forums

One of my aims this term is to experiment with the use of forums as a way of encouraging students to write about economics and reflect on what they have read, seen, heard or discussed. It is still early days, but the Moodle VLE offers several different types of forums each of which can be used in a variety of ways.

Single discussions appear on one page with a discussion topic usually initiated by the teacher and student replies underneath the opening topic. This can work well for focused discussions and I plan to use it later on this term to elicit answers to short revision questions.

A Question and Answer forum works in a similar way in that the teacher creates a topic for the forum and students then post one or more replies. However a student cannot see anyone else’s reply until (s)he has posted a reply - which is typically an answer to a specific question.

It is the second format that I have tried so far with reasonably promising results. For example in A2 macro I have provided students with a link to an article from the Economist, asking them to read it and then try to demonstrate their understanding of the core arguments or themes in the piece. They might have a strict word limit (designed to write with greater economy) or be asked to explain the arguments and then outline some of the implications. Here is an example on China’s saving and the impact on the world economy.

Changing the forum settings provides more options:

1/ Peer group feedback - I have encouraged students to read the postings of others (they must post first to have this opportunity) and the system allows them to rate other entries.
2/ Feedback comments can either be posted onto the forum or sent privately to the student through the feedback message option. This can involve suggesting links to other resources - a good option for stretching students to read further.
3/ The default setting is to limit each forum to separate groups so that students can only see the contributions of their fellow students in the class. It is though possible (albeit time-consuming) to create single-student forums

My own ratings for each student contribution are saved into the gradebook and added into the final assignment scores for the term. The contributions are easy to copy and paste into a word document so that answers can be printed off and handed back to students who want them for their core notes folder.

After half term I will be trying some other options with the broad aim of stimulating online discussion and reflection. For example, one assignment will ask students to draw ideas from a podcast - perhaps an edition of In Business or a streamed lecture from the LSE.