 Learning through discussion can be a very effective way for students to consolidate their knowledge, to tease out misconceptions and misunderstandings, to defend their position and opinion, and to engage with other students. Discussion can take place in a live setting, such as in a physical classroom or on a virtual classroom, and discussion can also take place asynchronously over a certain period of time. A synchronous discussion can lead to really rich interactions between students and the lecturer. It may also help support those students who are shy or reluctant to contribute in a live discussion, because it allows them time to consider the question or the material, to craft a response, to draw on evidence and literature to support their assertions, and to help form a rich environment. The Loop Discussion Forum is a great tool to facilitate asynchronous discussion, so let's take a look at it. On my loop dashboard, I click to access one of my modules, and I locate a discussion forum, which I have taken place in week one of the module. The most popular way a discussion forum is used is to have a thread or topic, or a number of topics, into which students post a number of replies, or indeed students can create their own topics if they wish. In this example, the teacher has started one discussion topic already, and called it week one discussion thread. I can see when it was started by the lecturer, and I can also see the latest post from the student. I can see the number of replies in it, and I can choose to subscribe to the forum by clicking the toggle button. This means I will get email notifications every time someone posts in the forum. The ellipsis icon gives me some further options. I can start this discussion, so if there are a number of discussions taking place in the forum, I can choose which ones are my favourite. I can pin the discussion, so this means for both the teacher and the student, this discussion thread now sits at the very top of the discussion forum. And I can also lock this discussion, so perhaps once week one is over, I want to stop students adding to that thread so I can lock it. They can still go and read all of the replies and responses, but they cannot add any more. To access the thread, simply click on the title. The thread is displayed in a nested order, which means at the top we see the first post, which in this case was made by the teacher, setting out a prompt or a question or a task for the students to complete, and then each student clicks reply to respond to this particular prompt. And we can see some students have done this already. Not only have students responded to the initial prompt from the teacher, but students are also replying to one another. And this is how rich discussion takes place. A good discussion forum task requires a well thought out prompt or question or task for the students to complete, and it also requires facilitation from the lecturer to help keep the discussion going. So at any stage, the lecturer can come in and choose to reply to a particular post by clicking reply. A text box appears and the teacher can type their response. Discussion forums can handle more than text, however. You can attach a file, insert links, or even insert images, video and audio. In the reply field, click advanced. We now have more menu options available to us. In the text field, we can use the formatting toolbar to format our response to insert an image, an audio clip, and so on. We can use the attachment field to drag or drop an attachment for the students to read, or we can follow the button to upload it manually from our computer. The forum also has excellent management tools, and we can access those by coming out of the thread and going back to the forum, and then clicking the gear icon in the top right corner. A useful feature is the summary report. This shows a complete list of every student in the module, how many discussions they've posted, how many replies, attachments, a word count, and their date and time. This is very useful for keeping an eye on student engagement with the forum. Forums can also be graded. Forums use the same grading methods that are available in the loop assignment, such as simple direct grading, grading by rubric, or grading by a marking guide. Using a rubric or a marking guide to grade your forum activity is particularly effective for students, as they can avail of criteria-based grading, and they can receive effective feedback for their work. If you want to use a rubric, you can create one from scratch, or you can import a rubric from the site. I've now added a rubric to this discussion forum, so to begin grading students, I simply return to the forum and click grade users. I select the student in question, all of their posts are on the left, and on the right is where I set their grades. So for the first criterion, I choose a level on the rubric that I believe they have met. I can add in additional feedback if I want. Working my way through the different levels in the rubric, through the different criteria, selecting what I believe the student has achieved. Click save, and I can continue working my way through the other students. To return to the forum, click close. Another feature of the forum is the ability to view posts in a new nested form, and I can do that by going to my preferences in the top right corner, click forum preferences, and turn on the experimental nested discussion view. Click save, and when I open the thread, I can see an updated interface that strips away a lot of the buttons and menus and options, and allows me to focus on the content that the students have posted. So that is the discussion forum in loop, a fantastic tool for supporting asynchronous discussion among students that allows you to keep track of their contributions to the forum, allows you to grade their contributions if you so wish, and gives both you and students flexibility in different types of contributions. For more information, please visit the loop staff support page.