In this activity, you are invited to explore a few resources that should deepen your understanding and promote critical thinking about forum discussions in online learning. This week, we have three short articles and a video. As you are reading/watching, keep these guiding questions in mind:

  • What are some of the opportunities of the discussion forum? What are the limitations? Challenges?
  • What is the role of the instructor? What isn’t their role?
  • What are some innovative ways of using the discussion forum?
  • What can you start doing (or stop doing) to support effective learning through discussion forums?

Week 3 resources

The first two readings are short articles from Hybrid Pedagogy, who describe themselves as “a community, a conversation, a collaboration, a school, and a journal.” Hybrid Pedagogy’s work is grounded in critical pedagogy and the notion of praxis, where theory and practice come together through experience and reflection.

The third reading is a short article from Inside Higher Ed, an online newsletter that brings together higher education practitioners with articles, current news, career information, and events. This particular article has some great ideas and strategies that address some of the concerns raised by the authors of the two articles from Hybrid Pedagogy that you just read.

Finally, here is a short video from our friends at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia. While this video is almost 10 years old, the ideas have ongoing relevance to how we use online discussion forums.

 [Note for FLO facilitators: We recommend you include an audio option for the text above here if using a platform that does not have an audio feature built in. Remove this note before offering starts.]


Last modified: Wednesday, 5 August 2020, 9:02 AM