The design of an effective learning activity is enhanced by understanding and applying principles derived from learning theory, cognitive theory, and theories of motivation. My effective practice applies these principles to the design of discussion forums in which each learner takes responsibility for adding teaching presence. The pedagogical effectiveness of these discussion forums is enhanced by taking advantage of the learners' psychological need for competence, relatedness and autonomy. Additional motivational factors contributing to the effectiveness of this forum design are the learners. need for achievement, need for cognitive complexity, and need for self-efficacy. Principles of self-regulated learning are also leveraged by facilitating the development of time-management skills.

Discussion-Forum-Pedagogy.pptx (link in submission form)
echnoheutagogy: http://www.technoheutagogy.com

Reading content is discussed in a forum using a student-led format. Each student submits a discussion question (or one per chapter if several chapters are being discussed). For the remainder of the forum, students facilitate the conversations they start with their question(s), and participate in several other conversations of their choice. These roundtable discussions provide each learner with the opportunity to pursue in depth the issues and topics they find most relevant and most interesting. Through their selection of questions to ask and questions to answer, they are able to take control of and customize their learning path through the content. Their questions become the topics they will be "teaching." The other conversations they enter become the topics they have chosen to focus on.
Rules:
1. Discussion questions are posted as a complete sentence. For example: Why do psychologists do research?
2. Questions must require critical thinking and thoughtful analysis to answer.
3. Reply to at least three discussion questions posted by other students. You get to select which questions you respond to - and in this way have a great deal of control over which issues you want to focus on in the chapters.
4. Start replying to others early in the module, so you can be an active participant in these discussion threads and interact frequently with the other participants.
5. Facilitate the discussion of your chapter questions by responding right away to each student who posts in your discussion thread. You can ask follow-up questions, probe for additional examples or details, etc. Your job is to fully explore the topic you have asked about. You are the teacher and the discussion leader for this topic.
6. Continue to lead your discussion threads and participate in the other threads you have selected throughout the entire length of the module. You are required to logon and participate in each discussion forum on a minimum of six different days.
7. Document your factual material by citing the source. Include all non-original content in quotes. Failure to properly acknowledge non-original content is plagiarism, and will be considered a violation of the college policy on academic integrity.
8. The more quality posts you submit, the better your grade will be on the discussion forum.
9. If you wait until the final few days to submit many of your posts, those posts will not receive full credit.
10. The subject (post title) of your posts must me a complete sentence which conveys the main teaching point you are making in your post message. The subject thereby provides an overview - or abstract - of your post message and provides the other students with advanced organizers to facilitate the cognitive processing of the new information you are providing in the post message.
11. Your post message must be accurate, original, relevant, well written, and must teach us something new about the topic under discussion.
Rules 10 and 11 assure the creation of a pedagogically valuable discussion post.
With these rules in place, and with early and frequent feedback provided by the instructor, the discussion forum is highly likely to be pedagogically effective, enjoyable, and valued by the learners.