Discussion forums for Sakai course sites

Pedagogy

The Forums tool allows instructors to setup discussion questions that students can access and reply to when they are logged in to Sakai. A forum can be used by the entire class, or Groups within a class. The Forums tool allows for threaded discussions, i.e., student can reply to your (or their) original question or to a response to that question.

The Forums tool can be used in a variety of ways by faculty, including but not limited to:

• Get a better sense of students' understanding of a reading or other course content prior to class based on their responses to a question about it.

• Anticipate / request students to pose questions about an assignment or issue prior to class.

• Encourage collaboration by asking students to share relevant documents or links prior to or following a class meeting.

• Promote written interaction among students outside of the classroom.

• Provide a course "self help" area (Course Q&A) accessible to students 24/7, moderated by the instructor.

With the exception of a Course Q&A discussion area, Forum discussion assignments are only effective when posting is required, generally as part of the class participation grade. Sakai's Forums tool provides statistics about the number of posts authored by students to simplify evaluation. Each post has a built-in word count. Forum postings can be graded and linked to Gradebook items if desired.

Tool tips

For students to use the Forums tool, the instructor must either post an initial Forum post (to which the students will be able to attach Topics and reply to each others' topics), or change student permissions to allow students to post new Forums. Permissions need to be set to allow students to write (author) in the Forums, either universally on a default Forums template or specific to each Forum. To add a Forum post,

• Go to the Forums tool and click New Forum (top).

• Add a Forum Title and, if applicable, Description.

• If you want to attach a document, do so here.
• Here is where you can change the permissions for this specific Forum topic.
  Change the permission level of Site Role: Student to Author to allow students to post new topics, edit their own posts, etc. Click Save.

• To add a new topic, click New Topic under the relevant Forum.

• To reply to a post in a Topic, click on the Topic name and click Post New Thread. Same steps apply here as above.

The Message box associated with Forums (and other Sakai tools) has a "Paste from Word" option that removes Microsoft styles, thus messages can be composed in Word and pasted without Microsoft Word's invisible "coding" effecting text readability.

The Forums tool has a "Watch" option so that you or your students can be notified by email about new forum posts. Since the course Sakai site home page indicates the number of unread Forums posts, "No notification" is recommended to reduce email.

For more information about using the Sakai forums tool at Scripps College, contact Scripps IT-FITS (Faculty Instructional Technology Support)

Online resources

• Contextual help in Sakai - click on the question mark with the blue circle
• Sakai Quick Start Guides (PDFs)
• Sakai @ the Claremont Colleges - SC Faculty Support project site
  Resources > Teaching with Sakai folder
  NEW! Sakai solutions wiki  (click on Wiki link in the project site).Step-by-step solutions to basic Sakai use, working with Sakai Resources, and advanced topics
• Visit I.U.'s OnCourse (Sakai) Forums Help