Using the forums for peer review is also a good idea, but you’ll need to ensure that you establish good ground rules because the forum is, after all, a public place. If you use the forum as a place for students to start a thread, post a draft, and then respond to each other’s drafts, you’ll need to ensure that they keep their comments positive and productive. One good way to do that is to provide a checklist of items to respond to. For example, you can ask students to respond to a series of questions:

• What did you like about this post?
• How could the post have been more specific?
• When did you want to know more? What could the author have provided?

The key is to keep the peer review questions brief and avoid having too many. After all, you want to motivate your students to interact, not frighten them into avoiding the forum altogether.