If you've previously taught online, you will be well aware of the importance of your course's discussion forum to the success rate of its students.

One way to encourage interaction in your edX course is to develop discussion questions that are engaging and invite students to share their personal or professional stories, along with their opinions. Look for ways to integrate the discussion questions with your learning sequences, or encourage engagement.

In addition, you and/or a staff member of your course will need to moderate the forum to make sure students' questions are answered, issues are addressed, and engagement is kept at a high level. You might also consider inviting some students who are doing well in the course to serve as moderators, especially if you have a large enrollment and find it challenging to manage the volume and speed of response in the forum.

One creative way to produce written resource material for your course is to ask students to collaboratively create...