Post by Emile Hung on Mar 12, 2017 22:05:41 GMT
Hi,
Here, I will elaborate on the what exactly is a forum and the reason why I decided to set up one, rather than use Facebook groups or pages, or MOODLE, to communicate with you FST students!
What is a forum?
In general, a forum is a particular mechanism or meeting, where ideas, views and concerns, of various issues or subjects, can be exchanged and discussed.
In fact, an Internet forum serves as an online message board where users can hold discussion conversations through posted messages.
You could also acknowledge that forums are social sites where members have at least one common interest (be it a movie, book, game etc) or binding, ultimate purpose, where everyone can communicate with each other with further sub-topics. In our case, this forum is meant for FST students to communicate with the Senator of FST of the Belmopan Campus (since I am only responsible for this Campus, but future developments may include Belize City FST Students to join).
Experience with forums
I’ve actually been on some forums before, but they were mostly “fan-based”. At Ask-UB SenFST, this is a student forum where we can discuss topics about UB, student life, courses and whatnot, in a friendly and respectable manner.
I have experience in about 4 forums before, in which one was a Hetalia role-play forum, and, another, a random forum of Catholics, where most were artist. Still, the newer ones that I visit from time to time also include forums based on Pokemon (Lake Valor) and Watership Down (novel written by Richard Adams) (Fiver's Honeycomb). You can check those forums out, if you’d like.
Likewise, I also made a draft forum through Proboards (the hosting server of this forum too) for the UB Student Government (SG) for Belmopan Campus. Unfortunately, not everyone was used to the new communication mechanism, and not everyone had access to Internet, so I decided to put that site “on hiatus” (it’s still there, but I removed access to members).
It’s a lot of work setting it up, especially the “preliminaries”, and a lot of “debugging” goes to making sure any person can easily register or navigate in the forum. Thus, even if you won’t register, this forum will be kept up to place many resource pages suited for FST students as well. You will definitely enjoy your time here, unless you’ve visited and read through all the pages and boards I placed!
Main Forum Terms and Definitions
Although MOODLE offers the use of a similar forum platform, most of the time, students would not be using such, unless for graded coursework, or for simply accessing news and updates from lecturers. Fortunately, this forum is open to new discussions from any FST student (so long as the Rules are followed) and to be more familiar with the dynamics and mechanisms of this different, new forum design (by Proboards), here are some terms and definitions you may need to be familiar with:
1. Category: The over-arching subject section in the forum
Eg: Welcome!, Important, Help & Resources, Student Life, etc
(Categories are shown as light text in a purple bar when you access the Homepage)
2. Board: The second topic section or sub-category under the Category. The Board holds all the individually contained discussions (Threads) which Forum Staff or FST students will make.
Eg: Welcome! (Category)
About Ask-SenFST (Board)
How to Join! (Board)
3. Thread: Contained Subject Sections within a Board
(Forum Staff and FST Students are able to create a Thread in a specific Board to start a new subtopic under the umbrella topic of the Board)
Eg: Welcome! (Category)
About Ask-UB SenFST (Board)
What is Ask-UB SenFST? (Thread)
The Practicality of Forums (Thread)
Why forums?
Other than the principal purpose of communication, I decided to use a forum system as one of the many means that students can reach the Senator of FST (thus, this is an online-type form of access to communicate with me, except that, in contrast to using emails, many FST students can discuss together, or we can have more organized, extended dialogues).
Moreover, despite the fact that many people use Facebook, the features in creating Pages or Groups do not satisfy the need for effective communication, professionalism, focus and efficiency which forums, like this one, properly provide. Ask-SenFST must serve as a main discussion hub with suitable functions and communication features.
In Facebook, neither Pages nor Groups can organize topics into sections, but can only conduct “blog” posts, where older posts or updates will eventually be lost as new ones are posted. “Tagging” each post would also require extremely tedious organization and memory so that posts can be found again. Furthermore, a Page would lead to public access, in which such would not be very favourable, as some discussions should be kept amongst the Senator and FST students, and not to the International audience to “lurk” around. Adding members to a Group would become a harrowing task, as identifying which person is a true UB FST student will be extremely difficult, as many do not have their real names displayed. Facebook itself fails to allow rich-text formatting and use of html coding (important for editing text into lists, emphasizing using italics or bold, creating headings etc). Most of all, Facebook is not even meant for providing communication services with a major purpose, and the newsfeed area, along with the many popping chatboxes, can only serve as distractions and frivolous features if I hope to ensure that FST students can communicate with the Senator properly.
The features, that Proboards forums offers, include far more extensive and useful functions which are suited to the purpose of this online message board in the first place. I can do all of what Facebook cannot, as mentioned above, and I can manage registered members, calendar, member groups, add plug-ins to enhance the messaging mechanism, and even create custom pages. By the time you finish touring all the possible links that are on this forum site, you will most certainly deeply appreciate what forums can do.
Updated: March 26, 2017 by EH
Here, I will elaborate on the what exactly is a forum and the reason why I decided to set up one, rather than use Facebook groups or pages, or MOODLE, to communicate with you FST students!
What is a forum?
In general, a forum is a particular mechanism or meeting, where ideas, views and concerns, of various issues or subjects, can be exchanged and discussed.
In fact, an Internet forum serves as an online message board where users can hold discussion conversations through posted messages.
You could also acknowledge that forums are social sites where members have at least one common interest (be it a movie, book, game etc) or binding, ultimate purpose, where everyone can communicate with each other with further sub-topics. In our case, this forum is meant for FST students to communicate with the Senator of FST of the Belmopan Campus (since I am only responsible for this Campus, but future developments may include Belize City FST Students to join).
Experience with forums
I’ve actually been on some forums before, but they were mostly “fan-based”. At Ask-UB SenFST, this is a student forum where we can discuss topics about UB, student life, courses and whatnot, in a friendly and respectable manner.
I have experience in about 4 forums before, in which one was a Hetalia role-play forum, and, another, a random forum of Catholics, where most were artist. Still, the newer ones that I visit from time to time also include forums based on Pokemon (Lake Valor) and Watership Down (novel written by Richard Adams) (Fiver's Honeycomb). You can check those forums out, if you’d like.
Likewise, I also made a draft forum through Proboards (the hosting server of this forum too) for the UB Student Government (SG) for Belmopan Campus. Unfortunately, not everyone was used to the new communication mechanism, and not everyone had access to Internet, so I decided to put that site “on hiatus” (it’s still there, but I removed access to members).
It’s a lot of work setting it up, especially the “preliminaries”, and a lot of “debugging” goes to making sure any person can easily register or navigate in the forum. Thus, even if you won’t register, this forum will be kept up to place many resource pages suited for FST students as well. You will definitely enjoy your time here, unless you’ve visited and read through all the pages and boards I placed!
Main Forum Terms and Definitions
Although MOODLE offers the use of a similar forum platform, most of the time, students would not be using such, unless for graded coursework, or for simply accessing news and updates from lecturers. Fortunately, this forum is open to new discussions from any FST student (so long as the Rules are followed) and to be more familiar with the dynamics and mechanisms of this different, new forum design (by Proboards), here are some terms and definitions you may need to be familiar with:
1. Category: The over-arching subject section in the forum
Eg: Welcome!, Important, Help & Resources, Student Life, etc
(Categories are shown as light text in a purple bar when you access the Homepage)
2. Board: The second topic section or sub-category under the Category. The Board holds all the individually contained discussions (Threads) which Forum Staff or FST students will make.
Eg: Welcome! (Category)
About Ask-SenFST (Board)
How to Join! (Board)
3. Thread: Contained Subject Sections within a Board
(Forum Staff and FST Students are able to create a Thread in a specific Board to start a new subtopic under the umbrella topic of the Board)
Eg: Welcome! (Category)
About Ask-UB SenFST (Board)
What is Ask-UB SenFST? (Thread)
The Practicality of Forums (Thread)
Why forums?
Other than the principal purpose of communication, I decided to use a forum system as one of the many means that students can reach the Senator of FST (thus, this is an online-type form of access to communicate with me, except that, in contrast to using emails, many FST students can discuss together, or we can have more organized, extended dialogues).
Moreover, despite the fact that many people use Facebook, the features in creating Pages or Groups do not satisfy the need for effective communication, professionalism, focus and efficiency which forums, like this one, properly provide. Ask-SenFST must serve as a main discussion hub with suitable functions and communication features.
In Facebook, neither Pages nor Groups can organize topics into sections, but can only conduct “blog” posts, where older posts or updates will eventually be lost as new ones are posted. “Tagging” each post would also require extremely tedious organization and memory so that posts can be found again. Furthermore, a Page would lead to public access, in which such would not be very favourable, as some discussions should be kept amongst the Senator and FST students, and not to the International audience to “lurk” around. Adding members to a Group would become a harrowing task, as identifying which person is a true UB FST student will be extremely difficult, as many do not have their real names displayed. Facebook itself fails to allow rich-text formatting and use of html coding (important for editing text into lists, emphasizing using italics or bold, creating headings etc). Most of all, Facebook is not even meant for providing communication services with a major purpose, and the newsfeed area, along with the many popping chatboxes, can only serve as distractions and frivolous features if I hope to ensure that FST students can communicate with the Senator properly.
The features, that Proboards forums offers, include far more extensive and useful functions which are suited to the purpose of this online message board in the first place. I can do all of what Facebook cannot, as mentioned above, and I can manage registered members, calendar, member groups, add plug-ins to enhance the messaging mechanism, and even create custom pages. By the time you finish touring all the possible links that are on this forum site, you will most certainly deeply appreciate what forums can do.
Updated: March 26, 2017 by EH
