The authors, Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel critique the LMS discussion forum in this hard-hitting article. They argue that applying rules in discussion forums kills any chance of spontaneous, creative engagement in discussion.  "The resulting posts do not constitute participation; they constitute attendance. What’s being measured is a student’s willingness and ability to check into the course twice each week. And while the required length of a post can force students to do more “talking” than they might otherwise do, this does not necessarily qualify as real engagement."

And continuing in this vein…

"They become over-cultivated factory farms, in which nothing unexpected or original is permitted to flourish. Students post because they have to, not because they enjoy doing so."

The authors offer other solutions to use with, or replace the LMS discussion forum – the types of social network platforms and tools that students are entthusiastically using for everything else in their lives for  "delightful, persistent, meaningful conversation":

Vanilla Forums

Disqus
Twitter

Facebook

Google+ / Google Hangouts

The Rapid eLearning Blog provides a simple but effective template as a useful starting point for designing an online module. The benefit of designing a template that suits a specific course is that there is consistencyand ease for participants accessing modules across the course.