E-learning Forums - Lessons Learned

Today we learned from our experience deploying Forums with our e-learning courses for Advanced .Net Developers. 

The following is excerpted from my presentation at the 2008 Learning and Technology Forum on Deploying Web 2.0 Communities to Extend Traditional E-learning.

1. It takes more than a solid platform to make a rich community.
2. You have to make the community broad enough to drive the number of users/interactions to a critical mass.
3. Place your forums at the right level page/object within your learning environment to encourage high participation. The course level is probably too low.
4. Categorize at the technology level, not at the e-learning course. (e.g. Active Directory, ASP.net)
5. Setting the right expectation for moderation of the forum is critical. Our SLA for responses is 7-days – this is too long. 24-48 hours for responses is probably more appropriate.
6. Plan for back-up moderators if your primary drops out (Primary = MVP, secondary = MS FTE)
7. Be clear on goals and structure the forums to meet your goals:
   • Support your training event (General, Lab)
   • Break-Fix (Support) (for the e-learning/forums product, not the technology)
   • Discussion area (Coffee House)
   • Ongoing technical resource (N/A – MSDN, TechNet)
8. Be prepared to support your community for the life of the training to which it is connected. People change, make sure ownership does too.
9. If you can’t commit to a long-term strategy, have a solid exit strategy.
10. Consider leveraging existing community platforms that already have critical mass, instead of creating a brand new community.