6 Tips To Keep Your Online Academy Discussion Forums Alive

Why Forums Are Beneficial For Online Training
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Summary: You need a sense of community when it comes to online classes. Discussion forums offer the ultimate place to share ideas, comments, and feedback. Online social media habits can be replicated in eLearning discussion forums. This is something modern learners can easily relate to.

Learn Why Online Discussion Forums Are Beneficial

Forums are more important than you might think and they can help improve your online learners and make them better.

Forums are very important and they play an important role in the online classroom, helping learners interact and form bonds with each other. Forums are the soul of online training. Forums are also where most of the interaction takes place between the students; they are critical for keeping the community alive. Online learners may feel isolated, therefore communication is important to help learners stay connected. Forums help achieve that form of connectivity among everyone and create an engaging experience for all. In this article, we shall see how forums are beneficial for online training.

1. Different Perspectives

A forum should be a place for everyone to come together and share their knowledge; a platform for everyone to gain knowledge from others. Learners will be able to see the world from each other's perspectives and grow together. The idea of an "ideal hero" differs for both the western and the eastern world. They have different ideologies and perspectives. That's their culture and how they have been brought up. Hence, when learners interact with each other, they can learn about different cultures. They can incorporate or learn from other's habits and make them their own.

2. Peer Review

Students do not need to wait for a teacher evaluation, they can participate in peer review where they give each other constructive feedback and critique each other in a healthy environment. They are able to understand their own mistakes and improve areas while scanning through the papers of others. If another paper is more detailed and better, they are bound to note it and use it to improve themselves. Peer review also helps to increase interactions and help learners develop rapidly through more interaction and feedback. The instructor is there to supervise and validate the facts of the learners and point them in the right direction, but the learners can also help each other stay pointed in the right direction.

3. Fun Activities

Fun-filled activities, like quizzes or playing true or false games online, can help learners increase their retentivity and become better. It also drives competition and motivates them to perform better and outshine others. Some learners can also play games for fun and not for the top spot. But, the serious ones, those who are competitive in nature, will be motivated to get to the top of the leaderboard in order to feel a sense of accomplishment.

4. Group Activities

The whole class can participate in group activities or be divided into small groups of 2 who work together toward a common goal and become better friends. The whole class can also take part in an activity, such as completing each other sentences or trying to keep a story going (i.e., where everyone speaks one line and the next person continues the story from there). Group activities like these help keep the class engaged and active. They are really a great way to keep the forum popular and active among all.

5. Role-Playing

People can come together in the online forums and participate in role-playing where they pretend to a be group of people working toward a common goal enacting a particular scene from history. Role-playing is considered a great team bonding activity where they all come together for a common goal and work together to achieve it. Students can similarly act in large groups or divide into smaller groups. Role-playing is a great activity for all. The learners directly involved get to participate and the others act as an audience for the actors, resulting in the whole community engaging with each other.

6. Recent Affairs

Forums are places where students can learn about recent events and keep themselves updated. They can come together to learn new words and have a debate about various topics, during which they can learn about each other's points of view.

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