A discussion forum is a Web site that allows people to communicate about topics of interest independent of time or place. Users are able to post multiple topics and reply to the topics of others as often as they wish. Discussion forums work best when multiple users are posting and replying to multiple topics.

Another way to define a discussion forum is by referring to another one of its titles--a discussion board. Think of a bulletin board in your school where people post announcements. Those announcements are viewable by the whole school faculty and remain there until removed. Discussion board messages are similar, however others have the ability to respond to them.

Below is an example of discussion forum post with a reply.

The main purpose of using discussion forums in the mathematics classroom is to increase discourse, reflection & critical thinking, & participation in an interactive and social learning environment. In an inquiry based math classroom, one of the most important parts of any lesson, the discussion, or debriefing phase, is often not what most teachers want it to be. When eliciting a discussion with my students, I am sure that only a small segment of the classroom is attending to the discussion and a few vocal students dominate it. The other students do not speak because they either: are too shy; think that their answers will be wrong; have not had time to reflect on the lesson; or they do not care.

However, when I move the discussion to a forum, or a similar environment (blogs work t00), every student becomes involved in the discussion. By using the discussion forum I have given my students time to reflect on the lesson--they have been able to think critically about what they have learned. Students who would normally be afraid to speak up in class due to shyness can now contribute to the discussion.

Threaded Discussions

The forum also allows discussion to continue beyond walls of classroom in the form of threaded discussions. The website Web Teaching at Dartmouth College states

By requiring students to respond to other posts, a dialogue can begin about the material. Each student brings different ideas to the forum and their classmates are able to learn from them, or correct their mistakes. They are now engaged and actively thinking about not only their own answers, but the answers of the other students in their group.

Writing Prompts

Of all the teaching strategies that I use in my classroom, writing is one of the most important. Having students respond to writing prompts in a discussion forum helps teachers to assess, review, and enrich the math curriculum. In a discussion forum, a problem is posted for students and they post responses by replying to the prompt. With one simple assignment I can ensure that my students are

• reasoning
• connecting
• communicating
• reflecting

Discussion forums also make assessment easy. On one webpage, a teacher can see all the questions and/or troubles that students have.

Incorporating Digital Images

Integrating digital images brings a new dimension to a discussion group as the information is no longer just textual, but is now also visual. Digital images allow a teacher to ask a wider range of questions because they can then use details from the image to eliminate much of the verbal description that would be needed without it. See the example below:

What conclusions can you draw from the graph above?

Homework Help

Several qualities of discussion forums make them excellent for homework help. First, the setup allows users to post questions and respond to the posts of others. If a student has a question about the night's homework, they can log on to the discussion forum and post a question. This allows the other users (one of which is the teacher) to respond with support. Hopefully, you can see the potential of this technology to create a community of learners within a classroom that exists outside of the school boundaries. The second quality of a discussion forum that makes it excellent for homework help is embedded in the first--it exists on the Internet and thus can be used independent of time or space constraints.

Resources

Horton, Sara. "Taking Discussion Online." Web Teaching at Dartmouth College. 08 Nov 2001. Dartmouth College. 09 May. 2005 <http://www.dartmouth.edu/~webteach/articles/discussion.html>.

Links

Proboards.com - [http://www.proboards.com/] - This site offers its users free, remotely hosted message boards. The boards are totally customizable. In addition, you get your own subdomain (http://YOUR-NAME.proboards.com)! Check out my discussion board at http://misterteacher.proboards19.com.

Bravenet - [http://www.bravenet.com] - This site boasts that it is the number one provider of Web tools on the Internet. I won't argue. Bravenet allows you to set up your own Web site for free and then add all kinds of tools to it like message boards, guest books, polls, counters, and more.

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