Forum behaviours

I'm fascinated at the differences in the two different OU forums I'm currently engaged in. In this post I describe the characteristics of each.  At a later stage I'll apply some of the academic theories to help me work out why they are so different.


One forum is for a science and technology module:

• one forum for all students on the module
• membership is the module team (10) and all students (110 *)
• threads are created by students
• much discussion and debate (only a third of the way through the course and already there are over 3 pages of forum threads)
• longest thread (excluding introductions) has 86 posts
• there is a separate chat forum

One forum is for a management module:

• a specific forum just for the tutor group
• membership is one tutor and about 50 students
• threads are created by the tutor (with only 1 or 2 exceptions)
• limited discussion and debate (there is a page and a half of discussion threads)
• longest thread (excluding introductions) has 20 posts
• there is an archive forum where the tutor files old posts

* the actual number may be greater - based on the number of introductions on the forum thread