Occasionally, students may act disruptively in the forums or post something inappropriate. Teachers can rest assured as there is no need to worry about monitoring the forums for student activity themselves - the Project STEM team is on the job! We moderate the forums for you and will inform you of any issues with your students. Our team of TAs and the Project STEM support team moderate all of the Project STEM forums and will reach out promptly to teachers about any inappropriate posts made in the forums by their students.
Tracking Anonymous Posts
Though student and teacher identities are anonymized on the forum, our internal staff can still see who is posting for public and private posts and, therefore, will always know who is creating disruptive posts so we can keep teachers informed of any issues.
Our staff will make any disruptive or inappropriate posts private, so that no other students will see these posts.
How Project STEM Informs Teachers of Student Misbehavior
The process that is followed when students do not follow the forum guidelines is below.
1. Any inappropriate post is made private so as not to continue to be disruptive.
2. Project STEM responds to remind the student of the forum guidelines.
3. Depending on the severity of the post and the student response, the student's account may be suspended from the forum to stop further disruption to other students.
4. Project STEM support staff then emails the student's teacher to inform them that the student is suspended from the forum and that we are happy to add them back at the teacher's discretion.
Screenshots and/or copies of the email notifications from the posts (mentioned in the earlier section of this article) are included in the email to the teacher.
This process allows the teacher to speak with the student without the risk of further posts being made in the meantime. It still allows the rest of the students in a class to access the forums. Oftentimes, teachers let us know after a few days that they have spoken with the student and we can remove the students’ suspension to the forum. We rarely see continued issues after this.