Forum

The Forum is a collaboration and communication tool that allows you to post a comment or question online. Students in class who are members of the forum may read that comment or question, and respond with their own comments over time.

As it is time intensitive, forums are called an asynchronous tool compared to a chat room which is a synchronous tool.

Forum Terminology

The forum on IVLE is a threaded forum. The phrase "threaded forum" commonly refers to threads of conversion, each focused on a particular topic.

For example if a staff post a question, and three others in the same class replied to the question and post their answers, these four posts comprise what is known as a thread of conversion and on the forum, will always be shown together. In this way, students can follow the line of reasoning on a topic or question posted by staff.

In the example below:

In IVLE Forum, a new thread or a new question is called a topic. All replied messages will be under a topic. In the example above, there are two topics.

Why should you use a Forum?

A forum is useful to supplement teaching for the following reasons:

• Students can extend discussions beyond the allocated time during class time, therefore allowing them in-depth reflection on questions and comments raised during class.
• Students will be participating actively in arguments which called for critical reasoning.
• You are sometimes anonymous in a forum - don't fear about embarrassing yourself.
  You will receive feedback from not only your lecturer but also your peers at the discussion.
• During the online discussion, you can bring in external sources of information.
• The threads of the forums can be archived for use during classes in the future.

Access the Forum

From the Workspace, click Forum of the relevant module.

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