Quite Possibly the Best Resource in Your LMS: Forums

Class forums are butter of how I teach “introductions to world religions”-type courses. Forums help me keep my students as far as possible away from approaching “world religions” as a mind-numbing memorization marathon of beliefs and practices that distances them from thinking critically about religion. Students can do that in an anatomy and physiology class, view should they choose to study medicine. I think it’s far more interesting for me and the students to have the intro course engage in the current theoretical and methodological debates of religious studies. My goal is for students to learn how to critically think and discuss with others.

Butter Battles: on what side of the flipped classroom do I put my forums?

As a result, sales the classroom is my bread. The brick-and-mortar classroom is the best place for students to substantively deepen their comprehension. I do this by adapting Spencer Kagan-style exercises for the application of method and theory in the higher education classroom.

I butter my bread on both sides, sovaldi however —class-forum-class-forum —so that each feeds into the other. I thereby find forums a helpful means to ensure that my students are fulfilling their learning objectives.

Higher ground: teachers… keep on teaching.

Let me be clear from the outset: my pedagogical valuation of forums is directly linked to my courses’ evaluation grids. Participation in forums counts for up to 50% of my students’ final marks. The other course evaluations are distributed amongst short essay writing and presentations. Forums are assignments, and students can and do fail my courses for lack of adequate participation in these assignments. I normally expect students to initially respond within 48 hours, and the entire mark is forfeited for missing a forum deadline. I require correct grammar and spelling, and I remove some or all marks from a poorly-constructed posting. No forums are anonymous. If I expect students to respond to each other, I clearly explain how and when this must occur. In the required 75-150 words, students are take strong positions and defend their points vigorously. And because these forums are not quite essays but not at all informal busywork, students who slightly exceed the minimum expectations do receive full marks.

The above takes place within all four 35-student sections of my 4/4 teaching load. I find this to be a completely sustainable and efficient pedagogy for the introductory courses that I teach in world religions, philosophy of religion, ethics and development studies.

I know what you’re thinking: Moloch

The professor for whom I was a graduate teaching assistant in development studies at McGill University made extensive use of class forums on WebCT for a 300-student class. I was astonished at the number of discussions he started among the students. I was mortified when I was informed of the responsibility to follow-up and ultimately evaluate student participation in the forums. Plucky and determined to impress, I sacrificed weeks to the WebCT forums that I called Moloch.

In the worst cases, I learned that where blogs work like pedagogical foxholes, protected divots of individual expression, forums are the trenches of pedagogy. Ankle-deep in verbiage, students and teachers alike can find them easy to slide into, difficult to escape and misery for many.

More than I cared to admit, however, I learned much from this experience: my grasp of the course material deepened through direct engagement with the students’ inquiries. I came to know the students intellectually. Like essays and short response papers, forums bracketed face-to-face communication and brought forward varieties of insight, expression and style. Forums lack the privacy of written assignments, and I think that my formative exchanges online lead to greater confidence in the class tutorials.

After three years and six terms with my professor, forums were firmly implanted in my pedagogical modus operandi.  Let me repeat what I noted above, however: these forums sucked away my early 30’s. Something had to change.

Forums! What are they good for?

Far from absolutely nothing, my GTA experience created a great respect for my professor and the use of forums. I deploy forums for several purposes, such as:

1. Intellectually-safe icebreakers: an effective active learning classroom depends upon an atmosphere of trust. Designing a first class session that introduces active learning alongside the use of forums helps me clearly communicate that I expect the entire group to become intellectually familiar with each other before mid-term.
2. Preparation for guest visits, virtual or in-class: My Moodle LMS effortlessly allows me to grant guests restricted access to my class’ site. At least a week prior to the visit, guests post articles or data, to which my students respond to my requirements; e.g. critical questions, observations, or summaries. Guest can use this to shape their session, and even call on students by name!
3. Activation for deeper analysis: since authors are mostly dead, my students are free to misunderstand and misinterpret any and all texts at-will. Their writing as well as yours truly is included. With the preparation of an intellectually safe space, the entire class can practice peer-review online or in-class. With the use of grids for classification and evaluation, either I or small student groups can prepare the class to go beyond surface-level engagements towards substantive analysis or application.
4. Online ‘seminars’: I conduct research seminars on the LMS with my students. Doing so requires strong practical knowledge of the forum controls, design according to desired learning outcomes, attention to realistic timing for students’ responses, semi-regular administration and quick action to resolve any bugs. For example, in its most basic format, the seminar includes the following: each student makes a posting where the subject header is their essay title and the text is their abstract. Attached to the post is their research essay. I then pair students, who must read and critically respond to one other’s work with two critical questions (a topic we develop among each other and with our guests). Each must give the interlocutor a detailed response.
5. These are but a few interesting examples. Among the host of other ways to deploy forums, I have students reflect upon video clips and images that either lead in or out from class sessions or I ask students to gauge their understanding of the course material.

Erring towards the Far Side

As a final point, I would like to note that forums help create favourable conditions for error. If my students slightly exceed my minimum requirements on-time, they obtain full marks for that forum. Through my presence as a moderator and the affirmation of their contributions in-class, students obtain the sense that their contributions matter, but their contributions need neither be “perfect” nor “correct.” As David Dery once wrote, “the erring organization is a learning organization only to the extent that its underlying premises may be constantly re-examined […] by providing organizational conditions that facilitate continuous questioning and replacement of organizational premises” (222).

My classes are learning organizations, and forums help me integrate the questioning of premises—critical debates about method and theory—into my teaching. Students learn positions and perspectives in these debates alongside information about world religions. All of it, including their own words, becomes each other’s data. Errors in religious studies are made, named and explored. On the far side from the first day of class, I believe they come out able to think critically about religion with other people.

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