Communication : Forums
Last updated
Last updated
Following on from the previous chapters you might be expecting to examine the learning paths tool at this juncture. However, we'll look at this later (see Structure: Learning paths on page 76). Instead, it actually makes more sense here to take a look at the next most commonly used tool on the platform.
The Forum tool allows you to organize the exchange of ideas, opinions and information relating to courses and the learning paths. The tool has been conceived so that learners with questions about their course can readily find answers to their questions without having to sift through a massive amount of information by themselves.
The forum is an asynchronous discussion tool, i.e. the people involved in a conversation do not have to be connected simultaneously to participate. Email is also an asynchronous tool. However, a major difference from e-mail is that the forum is a public or semi-public space, where several people can see information (even if they were not part of the discussion initially), boosting support for learning by providing ready access to really useful information, inasmuch as a group of students and teachers can exchange ideas together in their specialist field.
Forum management tools category
Name of forum
Illustration: Forum – Global view
Exchanges are organized hierarchically, as follows:
Forum category
Forum
Discussion thread
message
answer to the message
answer to the message
message
answer to the message
answer to the answer
and so forth...
