Forums | E-Learning Practitioners

06 August 2013, 18:46

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone knew how to set up a discussion forum in a way that all post remains anonymous to students (only instructors would be able to see the identity).

I am asking because I have the feeling that most of our students may be reluctant to ask online questions via the module forum knowing that everyone can see what they are posting.

Thanks

Nathalie

07 August 2013, 10:34

Dear Nathalie,

Currently no, there isn't a way to set up a forum for anonymous posting.  There are a variety of work arounds which people have used to get around this, including using a modified database activity to emulate a forum.

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=148055

A possible future solution would be to use a plugin to enhance the functionality of the forums.  This should probably go on to our list of possible system enhancements.

However, in the absence of a technology solution, maybe there are some other ways in which the students reluctance could be overcome.  I heard an excellent talk by a Physics teacher a few weeks ago about how he used a series of online activities to help student get the most our of using the online environment.  He started with "low stakes" activities and ice breakers to build the group before moving on to the "heavier" stuff.  He referenced the work of Jill Hadfield on classroom dynamics as being the major underpinning of what he did.  Maybe not immediately transferrable to your particular classroom, he was dealing with  relatively small class sizes I think but he seemed to have had quite a lot of success.

Is there anyone else out there who's found a good way of encouraging reluctant students to use discussion forums?

Gill

07 August 2013, 12:00

Just to echo what Gill said really...I also heard that talk from the Physics teacher who had problems initially with students participating online. The process he used to get students talking online was referred to as:

'forming' > 'storming' > 'norming' > 'performing' (something like that)

He described it as in any social situation, people are sometimes nervous or shy about speaking out at first, especially if they don't know each other (whether online or in person). So the first stage of 'forming' is meant as an ice-breaker - i.e. use the forum first to get people to introduce themselves for example - thereby forming the online group. The 'storming' phase is when you might add an activity that the group needs to contribute to - it could be a 'light touch' activity where there is no right or wrong answer. Again, this gets them talking and used to each other.

What he described sounded promising, but haven't yet tried it myself.

07 August 2013, 13:41

Thanks Gill and Alyssa for your responses.

The work you are mentioning is definitely interesting but not necessarly easy to adapt for very large class. We use forums to allow our students to ask questions or clarifications on topics covered in the module  (particularly to offer support during the revision period) and students are not really engaging. I am convinced that if they could post anonymously they will feel more confortable asking questions. I am not trying to force them to use the forum (I mean it's not part of the teaching strategy as such) - I just want to make sure they feel confortable doing so if they have a need for it. I definitely think that the forum on QMplus would greatly benefit from this option. What is the process to get it  on to the list of possible system enhancements?

Thanks

Nathalie

30 August 2013, 16:27

Can you help us by posting your opinion on this topic please?

Would you like us to enable the anonymous posting feature for forums in QMplus?

More information:
We recently had a post from Nathalie about anonymity in forums. We are currently exploring options for QMplus in this area, but I wanted to get some feedback from other members of this forum.

The problem:
It is sometimes hard to get students to post to forums within the QMplus environment.

The assumption:
Students fear that classmates are able to see what they are posting to the forum, and hence are reluctant.

Possible solution:
There is a feature within QMplus that would allow students to be able to post completely anonymously to forums. This feature is not currently enabled, and will require some testing before it is released.

The challenge:
The feature offers complete anonymity – meaning that no-one will know who made that post, including the teacher. However the teacher can remove a post if it is deemed inappropriate.

Your opinion:
I appreciate this feature may not meet the needs of teachers who need to see which students are posting, but is there anyone out there who feels that this is a useful feature and would like us to put this forward to be tested and enabled?

If you'd prefer to leave your opinion anonymously, please complete our online poll here: http://goo.gl/USPHjg

30 August 2013, 20:52

Would you like us to enable the anonymous posting feature for forums in QMplus?     Definately Yes!

Hi,

I have used anonymous Discussion forums on Blackboard at other universities.  On Blackboard this was set up simply, by selecting 'anonymous' in the forum settings.  However identity is also not known to the tutor.

As an example, this past year on a module of 160 students, there were ~200 posts from students on the various topics I set up (424 posts in total). With anonymous posts in Blackboard, it is unfortunately not possible to extract user info (e.g. how many students are posting and reading), but I consider the approach to have been successful based on the student module survey results: the e-learning component (which was predominantly Discussion forums) helped them achieve the learning outcomes (90% agreed); increased opportunities to interact with colleagues and tutors (95% agreed); and enhanced their learning on the module (90% agreed). 

Like Nathalie, I intrinsically feel that students will engage more actively if their posts are anonymous and in fact some M.Sc. students informed me they did not participate in the forums because they were not convinced the posts were actually anonymous.  My forums were largely used to ask questions but sometimes students also posted information or websites just to share with their colleagues which I also welcomed. I always signed my own posts so students knew the reply was coming from an authority, but I also invited students to sign the posts if they wished and this did happen on some occasions. 

Students started using the forums from the first day, as I introduced the platform in the introductory lecture and started out with a series of online office hours delivered through a Discussion forum. Students were warned in this lecture and online that if there was even one inappropriate post, the forums will be closed immediately.  On large modules in particular, I think students quickly see the value of such forums, and in 3 years on numerous modules, there was never a post I considered even remotely inappropriate.

I will be lecturing on the Nanchang joint programme (SBCS) where effective long-distance communication and online engagement will be crucial. I am very keen for us to pilot anonymous forums and keenly volunteering to do so! 

If anyone is interested for more info about my experience with the anonymous forums, feel free to contact me.

Rosemary

31 August 2013, 2:44

02 September 2013, 10:35

I would be happy to try an anonymous student forum. Since my non-anonymous forum was not used much this year I don't have much to lose. I would prefer the anonymity to be configurable by the Course Leader. And I would really prefer a forum that can be set to be anonymous to students but not to staff.

Francis

03 September 2013, 11:16

Thank you for the comments on the Anonymous Forum Posting. They were all very helpful for us to move forward with this. 

@Anne Hsu - From my preliminary basic viewing of the feature it would seem that anonymous forums would be optional for staff to enable/disable - but that will have to be added to the testing plan to check that it works as expected. Thanks for bringing that up.

@Francis Wright - Unfortunately the feature does not allow staff to view a post that has been posted anonymously. The feature allows the student to post completely anonymously - with the confidence that no-one will know that they posted that comment. This was one of the reasons why I wanted feedback from those who may want to use the tool - I wanted to know if the fact that it was completely anonymous, would this  make it unusable for staff ???

@Rosemary Clyne - Thank you for the very insightful comment and in particular for your experience in using completely anonymous forums. I think the hesitation that staff have are similar hesitations that students have - we don't know what people are going to say on forums and how they will react to what is being posted.

Rosemary, I like the warnings that you put in place initially, and I think it's important to set the boundaries/policies in place before starting, while also trying to make people feel comfortable. I am also glad to hear that even with a completely anonymous forum, you didn't have to take action for any inappropriate postings.

QUESTION:

Rosemary, you said '...students informed me they did not participate in the forums because they were not convinced the posts were actually anonymous'... - do you think students fear that teachers would know it was them making a post? Do you think it would be a deterrent if they posted what they thought was an anonymous post, but that their teachers could know it was them?

Please note: I have added this feature to our testing plan for the next QMplus release which is scheduled for 30th September. You can follow updates on this via our QMplus tracker under the 'Feature Enhancement Request' section.

14 September 2013, 22:35

When I asked an M.Sc. student (and it was only one) why his cohort was not using the Discussion forum, he said it was because the students were not convinced that it really was anonymous. It could be that they were concerned about their peers knowing, but I expect they were concerned that the tutor would know who was posting what (it was a small cohort ~30 students). If my tutor told me that the posts were anonymous, but it turned out they weren't, I would myself lose trust in that tutor. So I think the anonymity - whether that is fully anonymous or only peer anonymous - needs to be fully transparent upfront.

Perhaps it would be helpful to write a short code of practice for the anonymous forum that is visible in the Discussions block and discussed in class.

Rosemary