Activity to promote: Communication

Tool(s) used: Forum

Description:
This activity is designed to encourage students to get to know each other in an informal and fun way.

Each student (and the course facilitator) is asked to enter three statements in the forum, two truths and a lie about themselves. Everyone is then asked to guess which is the lie.

It’s an amazing experience and generates huge discussion amongst peers as to which are truths and lies. For instance in an online course with 25 students this generated over 300 forum entries and was an invaluable resource in the formation of an online community.

Tips:
Just one warning, if you feel the need to respond to each student you will spend a lot of time doing so. The upside to this is that once generated, the forum takes on a life of it’s own, and you can leave it to the students to keep the ball rolling without significant input yourself.

Reading student entries to this forum can give you invaluable information regarding the likelihood of problems ahead.