When teaching hybrid and/or online courses, consider having a Questions and Answers discussion forum to provide a 24-hour avenue for students to express public needs and/or questions. Often students will have a question that has already been asked by a peer, so students get immediate answers. This forum not only helps students, but provides timesaving benefits to you, as:

• you’re reducing the number of duplicate questions that otherwise need a separate email response from you
• at the end of the course you have a valuable FAQ repository
• oftentimes you do not even need to respond to Q&A posts, as students would have already thoroughly answered each other’s questions.

Here is some suggested verbiage for this forum:

Use this discussion forum for any questions that arise throughout the course. While personal matters are best handled privately (by reaching out directly to your instructor), non-personal matters are best handled publicly, so as to benefit the entire class.

If at any time you need a clarification or encounter obstacles during the completion of your work, please post a message to this public forum providing the details of your difficulties or questions. Your instructor and/or your peers will offer timely answers to your questions and/or collaborate with you toward a resolution.

Before asking a question, please browse the questions already posed by your peers, both to avoid duplication of questions and to possibly get your answer right away. Everyone in the class is strongly invited to subscribe to this forum, action which will generate an email each time there is activity in this forum. Thus, you will always be up to date with posts made here, as an additional learning opportunity in this course. This forum is not graded and participation is optional.