Best Practices in Use of Forums

Best Practices in Ungraded Forums

  • Establish etiquette and guidelines for using forums for general discussion.
  • In Q&A forums, establish clear expectations as to how soon can students expect an answer from you or your TA team.

Best Practice on Using Forums as Graded Assignments

  • Set clear expectations and instructions for graded forum activity.
  • If the forum activity requires students to react to other students’ posts, specify how many replies students are required to do.
  • Specify deadlines for initial post, and later deadlines for replies if replies are required.

Best Practice on Grading Forum Assignments

  • Create multiple forums as needed, depending on your class size.
  • Consider creating a rubric to help keep assessment consistent.
    • Compass 2g’s built-in rubric tool can significantly increase grading efficiency, especially if you plan to delegate forum activity grading to TAs.
  • Prepare some commonly used comments for TAs to use.
  • Acknowledge the positive aspects of students’ contributions, while clarifying why points get deducted.
  • If you specify word count as a grading perimeter, ensure your TAs check the count on Microsoft Word, since Compass 2g’s word count can be inaccurate.
  • Be lenient with English proficiency.

More Resources