Design for a discussion forum with activity workflow

The aim of this design concept is to show how a discussion forum can be structured into an activity workflow, with tasks, deadlines, and "syndication" (that is, breaking out into smaller groups to work on a sub-task). In many cases, unstructured discussions are of little value and fail to engage the students. Un-structured forum systems can have structure added by a skilled and attentive e-moderator. However, that is a costly route that can be avoided with the use of simple structures and activities.

In this case, the workflow with deadlines is presented on the left hand side. There is a degree of personalisation in that as tasks are completed either:

• the student manually marks that stage as complete
• the system recognises that the student has done what was necessary to achieve completion.

In this example, the workflow begins with the task of watching and commenting upon a video. Note that this example has just been created to illustrate how a discussion with activities and workflow would operate.

In stage 2 each participant chooses a theme to work on. This produces the smaller groups working on sub-tasks.

In stage 3, working in the theme based groups, each student must contribute at least one idea that may be used as part of the list that the group collectively creates. The task is not completed until they have submitted an idea.

Stages 4, 5 and 6 proceed in a similar fashion, with elements of discussion and activity. In stage 5, the participants in each group select the 6 best ideas and put them in order of priority. Finally in stage 6 they can view the lists made in each group and discuss how this will help with their classroom practice.

Robert O'Toole : 22 Dec 2010 14:05 |  Tags: Ideation Onlinelearning |  Comments (4) |  Report a problem