Having a forum in our courses allows us to create a community around it and our school. The community helps to connect your students with your school and with each other, get in touch with the teacher and have support from the teacher and other users to learn better. It is a service that gives additional value to your training proposal.
Many students are also interested in meeting people with similar interests to generate new ideas and dynamics. One thing that online courses lose compared to face-to-face is the networking and community factor. Thanks to the forums, you will be able to recover these dynamics.
Most MOOC platforms have forums, since most of the learning is based on user interaction, evaluating the work of another for them to learn, or consult with the teacher.
You don't have to upload your courses to Coursera or EdX to create dynamics like that. LMS like Foxize Cloud have incorporated forum and chat into their platform, so that you can activate it in the courses you want.
Before offering forums and chats for your courses, you must bear in mind that for them to work well they require constant dynamism to encourage students to share their ideas and doubts. This can be through additional exercises, additional materials, news, etc.
For example, sharing news or current events on the subject of the course in the forums allows opening debates and generate conversation among students, keeping the platform alive.
Another aspect to take into account is that the forums require moderation, that is, there must always be a team member who is aware of the comments and doubts that the students have, in order to respond. If we do not attend our forums, it will give a bad impression of our school. Bad attention to the student.
Thanks to the forums, you can also detect VIP students, those who are more active in the community and who are possibly interested in other courses on your training platform. Continuing to interact with them and offering quality content in the forums is also a way to retain your students.
How to energize the forums of your courses?
Before enabling a forum in your course, make sure you are prepared to manage it and make it more dynamic:
- Organize your forum in different sections dedicated to different topics, such as doubts, sharing projects, news, etc.
- Write a series of rules of behavior, what type of content should be published and what not.
- Have a facilitator or moderator to stimulate and resolve doubts. This can be the same teacher of the course or another associated person.
- Provide additional course material on the forums. An incentive for students to return to the platform.
- Create dated activities to give them time to prepare but also to increase participation.
If you still do not have your online training platform, at Foxize Cloud we offer you a free month to start taking your first steps. Without obligation!
