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Forums
Last but by no means least are discussion forums. This is frequently where the core part of the learning takes place for online students. More traditional materials are really only the starting point, it is in these forums that learners often have their light bulb moment. Only by applying their new found knowledge, asking questions and replying to each other's queries do students really attain a meaningful understanding of a subject.
Forum activities can vary from debates that encourage participants to discuss relevant topics (ideally mediated by eTutors) to posts where students upload examples of their work and discuss any problems they have encountered during practical exercises.
Forums vs. Quizzes
During project-based activities learners can use forums to upload samples of their work in progress. This allows eTutors to provide feedback and guidance, letting them know what's working, what's not, and how they might improve. You simply can't provide this kind of support in the type of 'click-through' MCQs that most people associate with e-learning.
Formative assessments are important to studying online. In the absence of direct and immediate classroom feedback, they provide learners with a sense of achievement and allows them to gage their progress. My recommendation is simply to resist the temptation of automatically resorting to one dimensional MCQs or fill-in-the-blanks exercises.
Writing effective quizzes and other formative assessments can often be more time consuming than multimedia development. That's the way it should be. The fundamental task, whether authoring automated quiz interactions, or writing task guidance notes for forum mediators, is to provide feedback that is rich and meaningful.
The key is to provide the kind of tuition that a skilled educator would offer in a face to face setting; supportive, encouraging and above all empowering students to learn for themselves.