Spicing Up Teaching with Forums: An Online Workshop for Faculty
Abstract: The focus of this practice session is the online workshops provided to faculty by our Educational Technology Unit. The aim of the study was to examine whether participating in a motivating online workshop as students through Moodle would diversify the instructors’ use of online forums. To enhance active participation, motivation was deemed a vital part of instructional design. Therefore, the workshop was designed and developed using Keller’s ARCS model. The participants consisted of 10 instructors from different departments. The data was gathered through pre and post workshop questionnaires, Course Interest Survey (Keller,2010), interviews, examination of Moodle logs and courses of the participants. Preliminary results indicate high satisfaction, motivation and engagement with the online workshop as well as instructors’ future plans for diversification of the types and uses of forums.