Forum Participation
It is difficult to get students excited about asynchronous forum participation. Students can be resistent to the stuctured forums that are part of academia. Initially students see them as a free-for-all to express their opinions. However, despite the initial resistence, I do find students start to discuss and post in a more intellectual manner.
Pam,
This is great! IT is very similar to what I do too. I like to encourage healthy completion too.
Getting students to be active in a discussion can be difficult on both the traditional and online classroom.
I take my experiences from the traditional classroom into the online classroom to get them more active.
Step 1:
Start talking about items that interest the students.
Step 2:
Relate an experience that you have back to an experience that they have to show a connection
Step 3:
Relate the discussion topic to an experience that they have discussed or to a topic that you think that they will relate to.
Step 4:
Interact with the students
Kelia,
I like your characterization of a "free-for-all" in a Forum setting. It's much like listening to students talk to each other in class. Lots of enthusiasm for whatever the topic happens to be. However, ask them to discuss "our" topic and things usually change.
The same thing is true with online Forums. If the student could pick the topic...there would be fewer problems, or (at least) a improved chance of participation.
