That's an interesting idea with regard to the viewport. What I'm thinking is that clicking will force students to interact and I don't see scrolling and clicking to 'mark posts as read' to be too much of a challenge. Again, there would be feedback given to the students that the post has been read and I believe that would be a little source of encouragement, through visual stimulation. It sort of promotes interaction as well, and something else to do besides reading and scrolling. I'm a believer in the interactive component to help reinforce messages that are presented. Think about how satisfying it is to mark your trail when you're learning how to do something or absorbing material. It serves as a reference for accomplishment and students are especially sensitive to that.Ger wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:52 amThis shouldn't be too hard actually.
Why would a student need to check a box if they've already opened the topic page? Either it's too much (20 boxes to check for every page) or needless (if each topic as only a handful of posts).profKroy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2017 5:54 am 2) I'd like the user to be able to check a box on a post once they've read the post. It would serve as a visual reference for them that they've read it, and it would be documented/timestamped on the back-end somehow so I could get a better sense of time spent with the material.
If you have multiple posts on a page, I'd automate this by checking if the post has been in the viewport of the user. If so, mark it as read.
In my instruction I would set parameters for students with regard to how they should interact with the posts because as you mentioned, with expanding topic threads I don't actually expect students to read everything. We all know how differently we read web based material. Sometimes we just absorb chunks at a time and skim. That's perfectly okay.
But combined with the "starred" post idea, students would/should know to read and mark starred posts. That would be good practice in terms of their interaction with the forum and I would provide instruction on those best practices, which I do already with regard to the forum's use. I let students know how to get the best learning experience from the forum.
