Student-Student

• Early in the semester, provide ice-breaking activities.
  • Ask each student to post 8 nouns describing themselves with brief explanations.
  • Ask students to post 2-3 things they hope to get out of the course
  • Ask students to post 2 truths and 1 lie about themselves. Challenge other students to identify the lie
  • Online scavenger hunt for course related resources
• Role-playing. Have students respond to discussion forum topics in the personna of a famous person in your field
• On-line debate
• Critical Friend. Assign students the job of providing feedback for a partner

Student-Teacher

• Use surveys to find out how students are doing/feeling
• Use online pretests to find out what students know a few hours before class. This encourages preparation, and can also be used to make subtle last minute changes in how material is to be presented that day.

Student-Content

• Ask an Expert. Each student becomes an expert in some area, and provides assistance to others who need help in that area.
• Starter-wrapper. Assign a student to start up a discussion on a particular topic, and another to summarize at the end.