How to run a great online discussion

Great online discussion forums don't just happen – they need to be designed, managed and supported. Sometimes I hear people complain that learners don’t use discussion forums. The problem is often that the forum topic hasn’t been designed well or isn’t adequately supported – not much is happening beyond loading a topic and hoping for the best.

What not to do

Universities are often guilty of using online discussion forums badly. This is a shame because this is often the learner’s first experience with such a forum. In most university programs the facilitator is not an active part of the discussion, and the topics are often badly designed. The worst example I’ve heard of is where the very first discussion topic in a course was to critique someone’s work.

The core principles

There are two core principles to making a discussion forum work.

1. The facilitator needs to be present and be an active part of the discussion. I’ve written more about this in the blog post What does a community manager do?
2. The discussion topic needs to have a set timeframe. For example, it might run for one week or one month. If the discussion has no end-date many people don’t feel the need to respond, and put it off until it’s too late. (The only time this might work is for question and answer style topics.)

What is the recipe to making an online discussion forum work?

The approach outlined below runs over a week, though a similar approach could be applied over a couple of weeks or a month. The longer the discussion runs for, the more challenging it is to keep the participants engaged.

The Spark	The foundation of a great discussion is the topic. Gilly Salmon calls this the ‘spark’, which is an appealing notion as it gives the concept an emotive edge. A great spark has a couple of key features: it doesn’t have right or wrong answers it poses complex, open questions. Case studies that reflect the problems that participants face day to day are great.
	The facilitator should send a personal email message to the group about the topic(s). The tone should be warm and encouraging. This shouldn’t be an automatic message. There will be some people who respond to the spark on the first day. It’s important for the facilitator to reply to those messages in a way that is positive and encouraging. The most important thing the facilitator can do is ask lots of questions.
	Day 2 is usually the day when learners are most likely to post. The facilitator needs to keep on replying and asking questions. As the community builds over time, the facilitator doesn't need to ask as many questions because other members of the community will begin to pose questions as well.
	Depending on participation level this is a good stage to re-spark the conversation. A few ways to do this: Send an email message to the group talking about what has been happening online. This message helps to draw people back into the conversation. Add a new spark. Add a new piece of content that the learner has to go into the community site to access.
	Keep on checking for posts and asking questions. This is a good time to see who hasn't logged on and try to resolve any issues they might be having with with their login. Then there might be a group of people who have logged on but haven't yet posted. These people are often still learning but don’t feel confident enough to take part in the conversation. Sometimes a personal message or phone call will help them to feel more comfortable with posting.
	The last stage – writing a summary of the week's discussion – is often missed. To write the summary, the facilitator needs to look at the posts and choose a statement from each participant to include. This is positive reinforcement to everyone that their contributions are valued. The summary becomes a mixture of statements from the facilitator and participants, and are a great way to bring together the learning and ideas that happened during the discussion topic. Some facilitators send out their own notes about the topic at this stage. Finally, email the group to let them know the summaries have gone online. This closes off the discussion, and then the group can move on to the next topic.