One forum activity, for example, asks students to do some research on a person living in an urban Roman city in the first century CE. Each student creates a character and writes a diary entry or letter recording what he or she did in the course of a day or a series of days. To do this well, students need to research a few things about the professions and classes that would have existed. “The students end up talking back and forth in character in a situation like that,” Laney says. “At no point have I actually asked a question.”

The key to making these role-play assignments work is providing explicit instructions. For each role-play assignment Laney provides about a page-and-a-half set of instructions, including background, lists of reading assignments, and a step-by-step explanation of what they need to do. Laney posts instructions within the discussion forum rather than in the syllabus or the course schedule, because the forum is where the assignment takes place and students are in the forum on a regular basis. Providing instructions in the forum instead of elsewhere also gives him the flexibility to make changes without diverging from the syllabus—the syllabus simply says that the forum continues from week to week and makes no mention of specific assignments.

Debate

Debates also work well in the discussion forum, Laney says. He recently had students debate whether democracy in the Middle East would result in better or worse relations with nations in the region. It’s a pretty straightforward assignment; however, when having students debate it’s important to set clear ground rules to keep things cordial and to avoid simplistic arguments.

The same notion applies to question-and-answer discussions. For example, he once had a discussion that asked students to compare the democracy of fifth-century Athens to the current democratic system of the United States. Which is more democratic? When he checked the forum the next day there were a bunch of messages such as “I hate George Bush” and “Obama’s a socialist.” “Then I [posted], ‘This is way off topic. The main purpose of this assignment was to talk about Athens and learn about the Athenian system,’ but by then it was too late.”
Taking a lesson from this incident, Laney now includes a statement that says, “Note: The main purpose of this is to get a handle on the Athenian system of government, so please avoid judgmental comments about American politicians.” “If I do that up front, I don’t have redirect it a lot. We don’t tend to get off topic,” Laney says.

Discussion forums can also include audio. One of Laney’s colleagues has students embed links to VoiceThread files they create to practice speaking in Spanish and critique each other’s pronunciation.

WebQuest

In weeks when a major assignment is due, Laney gives students a less intense discussion forum assignment. Rather than carrying on a discussion over the usual two-week period, he has students do a simple WebQuest and post their findings without having to respond to each other. For example, he may ask students to post an image, video, or music clip from the Romantic Period of art in the 19^th century and write a brief description about why it’s considered an example of Romanticism.

Laney has good retention rates in his online courses—typically 75 to 80 percent and sometimes higher. He attributes these high retention rates in part to the discussion forum assignments.

Grading

To keep the discussion forum assignments manageable, Laney asks students to post their messages in a single thread. In a class of 25 people there may be 75 messages in a week, but having all the messages in a single thread makes it relatively easy to grade. “I keep up with it so I have a good sense of who’s been participating actively and who has been sharing good information.” When a discussion forum activity is over, Laney can click on an individual student’s name and at a glance assign a grade. It typically takes 30 minutes every two weeks to grade a 25-person discussion forum.