Student Usage Rate

  We do not have information on how many UW Madison students use forums.

Forum Basics

An Internet forum is an application for online discussions. Also known as a message board or discussion board, users of a forum can create topics and discuss these topics with other users by posting messages and reading and responding to others' posts. A basic forum will consist of posted messages (posts), links to other sites or posts, and possibly photos.

"Compared to wikis, Internet forums don't allow users to edit the forum posts of other users; however, administrators and moderators generally have the capability of doing this."

"Compared to weblogs, Internet forums generally allow most users to post topics (sometimes referred to as "threads"), while blogs only allow one or a few users to create entries. Forums also tend to be more diversified in interest, while blogs tend to be more specific to a certain topic or subset of beliefs."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum)

Uses

Forums often serve a social purpose, allowing people to start and discuss topics of interest on an equal footing with others. They can also be highly informative sites, where advice, opinions, and information can be exchanged.

Suggestions for Educational Uses

Create a forum as an environment for class discussion or debate. This may be especially valuable in a distance education setting.

Students may post responses to a class or public forum as an assignment.

Have students create a forum to gather information for a research project. Note that information gathered will not be from a random sample of people, but a self-selected group who find your forum and choose to respond.

Students may search through forums to investigate differing viewpoints on popular topics.

Create a class forum to build community amongst your students.

Etiquette

• Keep in mind that rules of spelling and grammar are generally followed more strictly in forums than in environments such as instant messaging.

• Become familiar with a forum before posting to it. If you have a question, it may have already been answered elsewhere on the forum. If you would like to add a new topic or thread, find the most relevant category to post it under, and make sure that it doesn't already exist!

• As with other Internet technologies, avoid typing all in capital letters, using excessive punctuation, or excessive emoticons in your posts.

Forum Jargon

avatar - " An icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality.... A picture that a member of a forum has elected to display alongside his or her contributions in order to represent him or herself." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%28virtual_reality%29)

thread - a.k.a. topic. Most users of a forum have permission to post a new topic to the forum. Then, other users of the forum can make posts to this topic. In the picture of the Apple Discussions above, you will see a user created the topic "Too small?" and another user responded under this thread or topic.

Getting Started

Find a forum that interests you and start posting! You may have to create an account with a username and password before you are allowed to post.

Create your own forum:

The easiest, most secure way to create an Internet forum for an academic course at UW Madison is to use the Discussions tool in Learn@UW. Note: This forum will only be accessible to instructors of the course and enrolled students.

Yahoo! also offers a simple solution to creating a forum through groups.yahoo.com. Click here to create a Yahoo! Group or forum. Yahoo! Groups offer Chat, Polls, Calendars, and more in addition to the ability to post and respond to messages in a group setting.

Popular Forums

It's hard to determine the most popular forums, as there are so many around and so many different topics to discuss! These forums are popular, nonetheless.

• Gaia Online

• Slashdot

Forums in Learn@UW

The Discussions tool in Learn@UW is an Internet forum. View Sample Learn@UW Courses: Kinesiology, Distance Education, Education, and Botany all feature Discussions.