Option 1: Designing a Discussion Forum with Scoring Criteria

Create a Table of Specifications to identify the course content you want to assess and the level of thinking you want your students to illustrate. Use the template Table of Specifications. (download the template by clicking the blue text)

A table of specifications outlines the course learning outcomes associated with the discussion forum, the specific content areas covered in the forum, the level of cognitive demand students will use to demonstrate their learning, and the weighted value you place on each content area you will be grading.

See a sample Table of Specifications: SAMPLE Table of Specifications

Step 2 Building Your Scoring Criteria for Discussion Forums

Create your scoring criteria. This is the assessment tool you will use to evaluate your students’ learning. We use scoring criteria to grade students.

TIP: Checklists and Holistic Rubrics are faster and easier to create. However, they view content and competencies as a ‘have’ or ‘have not.’ Analytic Rubrics are more complex, but they provide a stronger evaluation process for grading and student performance.

1. Choose whether you will be using a checklist, holistic rubric, or analytic rubric to evaluate your forum. Review Section 2 for more information about the differences between these tools. Use the templates provided to guide you through the creation of your chosen assessment tool. By clicking the text in blue, you can download a template to create your assessment tool.
2. Open the template. Replace all of the [text in brackets] with specific content related to your assessment. You can use the information you have outlined in your table of specifications. Your content in your table of specifications can be easily copied into the content for your scoring guide. You may want to be more specific and create more detailed descriptions. You can also use the weight you have identified in your table of specifications as a guide for determining how much content area is worth.

A) Design & Build the Structure for your Discussion Forums 

Now that you have built your grading criteria, you want to consider how to structure and design the discussion forum. Think about how students will engage in the forum, how you will moderate the forum, how you will give feedback and when you will grade forum posts. We recommend that you open a new Word Document to write down your ideas.

B) Creating Prompts 

Now you will write the questions/prompts to promote student discussion. The number of prompts will depend on the number of discussions you have planned. You want to create prompts that you can easily grade with your assessment tool.

Refer to your table of specifications and your assessment tool to help you build and design your prompts.

Consider creating a master list of prompts and questions on a Word Document. For each due date you have indicated create a prompt that relates to the content and level of learning you want students to exhibit.

Step 4 Setting up Forums in Moodle 

Now you are ready to build your Discussion Forum in Moodle.

You may choose to have students engage in the Discussion in an open, public, online space like a website or chatroom. Be aware of student confidentiality requirements and accessibility issues if you choose one of these options. For this boot camp, we will ask you to build your forum in Moodle.

TIP: Before you begin building your Discussion Forum in Moodle, consider where you will create your Discussion Forum on Moodle, where the grading criteria can be found, and how it will be set-up in the Gradebook.

Here’s how to do this on Moodle. Please follow the steps provided in the tutorial and build your discussion forum in your class Moodle page. You will want to open your class Moodle page and keep the tutorial open to guide you through building your forum in Moodle.

Step 5 Receive Feedback 

It is always helpful to have a second pair of eyes on new teaching tools. Here are two ways you can receive feedback:

1. Consider having a colleague read through your forum.
2. Ask the Teaching Centre to review your assessment.