I posit that a change in the UX with Forums/Open Forums would make forums more inviting.
Does anyone know of plugins that seek to allow an optional, different UX? If not, is this something worth placing in the discussion for development?
As one possible example:
- When you log in to the Moodle course with the activity, there are popups in speech bubbles with up to five of the most recent comments made on various Forums in the course
- Imagine a "while you were gone...." notification from many apps with group-edited artifacts
- The bubbles' colors could relate to the particular Forum/Open Forum
- Instead of showing in a flow or outline format, each Forum appears more like a mind map - so if there is a Forum with five topics, then there are five bubbles that show up, with indicators that show how many threads and how many total responses haven't been read.
- Students click on a thread, and it magnifies/grows visually to fill the screen, with the central post's topic in a bubble, and surrounding bubbles showing the subject line of the first response/thread.
- Click on that to show all responses.
- (not necessary, but possibly worth considering?) Login to the Moodle instance also has popup bubbles with a "While You Were Gone" label that show five most recent Forum/Open Forum posts from across all the users' courses
- These views can be turned off by site, category, course, Forum, or by student.
I am not a graphic designer nor Web designer, so I am not wedded to this particular vision; I provide it merely as one example of a way we could present Forums in a potentially more engaging manner.
