Christine McCourt from the division of Midwifery and Radiography describes how she uses the Moodle discussion activities (forums and chats) to support students in developing their ideas and writing for their summative essay in Midwifery.

“For the master’s module which I lead, I use discussion forums and the weekly (on no-lecture weeks) chat room partly for formative feedback.

The idea is to get students to practice shaping their ideas and putting them into writing and discussing more actively with each other than they would in a classroom.

I respond to students’ posts in the discussion forum and ask the students to respond to each other. I use my responses to encourage and to facilitate people (and sometimes steer a bit) to connect their experience and ideas with the readings and theories in the module. This is quite an ‘academic’ module (midwifery theory, profession and practice) and the assignment is an essay but is important that they develop their capacity to link theory with practice, to help them to use theory to analyse practice critically. 

There is also an assignment discussion forum on Moodle where students post their developing ideas about their assignment – the topic, how to focus it and ensure it fits with the learning and assessment objectives and they provide each other feedback in addition to me responding.

I require them to participate in the online forums (at least one is specified but I ask them to participate in all of them for formative reasons and to support each other).

Students have commented that as well as helping them to look at issues in new ways, participating in the forums and chats helps them with their writing.”