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I recently finished a short course on Travel Writing and Feature Writing. The course was taught by well-respected professional writers who want to share their knowledge to amateur writers with passion for the craft. The courses were a new venture for the freelance writers and kinks have to be ironed out, admittedly.

The travel writing course was only 10 hours divided to two sessions. It was quite an enjoyable experience so I decided to sign up for the Feature Writing course as well, even though the lessons were delivered via elearning online method. There were course materials handed out and most of the communication between lecturer and student was done by email.

Although I loved the content of the lectures and the critiquing by the professional writers, I felt like the lessons were too short. Maybe it’s because I was having so much fun doing something I was passionate about! The lecturers were in agreement that we need to do follow up sessions. Someone had the idea to use a forum as a meeting place for alumni and current students. It was a great way to keep in touch and encourage each other to keep writing.

The site we used was lefora.com. Forum administrators have the option to make the forum exclusive by invitation only. Students can drop by and chat with other students and once in a while, a lecturer would join in the discussion. It promotes a healthy, creative and supportive atmosphere, simulating a real community where students can ask question from the lecturers acting as mentors. Due to the limited course time of the elearning online sessions, a lot of topics were left out. In the forums, we can talk about the topic in depth and best of all, the service is free! Lefora is not the only free forum site on the web but it definitely fits our needs.

I would highly recommend having forums as an added feature to any elearning online curriculum and as a platform to follow-up on alumni to see how they are progressing.