Preparing to Teach Online

In this lesson, we have reviewed some types of questions that you can ask students using discussion forums. However, forums can be used to facilitate all three forms of interaction (student-faculty, student-student, student-content) using a variety of active learning strategies.  Try incorporating different active learning strategies to forums throughout your course to increase student engagement and genuine interaction. Below, I provide you with a list of the nine active learning strategies that you can add to your course using forums. Feel free to modify any of these activities to fit your course content, context, and level. On the next page, you will be asked to select one of these strategies or an active learning strategy that you used in a face-to-face course and explain how you would/could use it in your online course.

1. Picture Prompt

Show students an image with no explanation and ask them to identify it/ explain it and justify their answers. You may ask students to write about it using terms from the lecture.  Use the discussion Q&A  forum setting so that students can't see the response of other students until they have responded themselves.

2. Word Cloud

Ask students to submit 5-10 keywords in a Q&A forum or through the assignment tool that describes the reading, summarize the lecture, or express their feelings towards a topic or experience. Then create a word cloud based on the responses using wordclouds.com and post the image in a new forum, possibly at the beginning of the next unit. Ask students to respond in the forum by sharing what 2 words stand out to them and what specific content from the lecture, reading, video, etc may have led their classmates to choose those keywords.

3. Small-Group Review

Place students in groups of 4. Ask each student to either summarize, question, connect, or comment on presented content (reading, video, etc). This activity can be done at the beginning of a session to review previous content or at the end by completing the 4 steps: summarize the content, phrase 2 remaining questions students may have, connect to other content within the class or to content outside of the class, or comment on the content or the interaction that students had with the content.

4. Muddiest Point

Students write for 2 minutes on the most confusing point in the lecture. Other students are asked to respond by clarifying another student's muddiest point.

5. Haiku Interpretation 

Students write a haiku ( a three-line poem: 5-syllabus, then 7, then 5) on a given topic or concept and share it with the class. Other students respond by providing a possible interpretation of the haiku and include references.

6. Infographics

Students work in pairs or small groups to create an infographic that combines flowchart logic or series of facts into a visual presentation using free online tools (Vengage, Canva, Infogram).

7. Student-Led CFU

Ask students to create a  fill-in-the-blank, multiple-choice,  and short-answer question from the material presented that week and share it in the forum.  Students can NOT repeat a question that another student has already posted in any form.  Each student must respond to another student's post by answering their questions and stating where the answer was found. Students can refer back to this forum later as a study tool. 

8. Think-Pair-Share

Students are given an open-ended prompt and placed in pairs. The students schedule a time to discuss the question via phone or video call.  One of the students from the pair posts a 1-2 minute video in the forum summarizing their discussion. Students can use the recording tool directly in Moodle or upload a video.

9. Jigsaw

Similar to a think-pair-share, but students are placed in reading groups. Each group is given different material or a different section of the material. Students discuss the reading using a chat group, virtual conference tool, or separate forum. As a group, students post a summary of the reading and attach an outline with reflection questions and answers.