Lefora is a free forum hosting service which makes it very easy to start forum discussions with your groups or one-to-one clients. Setting up and customizing the look of the forums is simple and so to is inviting users to join. Another feature that is particularly useful I think is that you can embed media in much the same way as you can here in a wiki. So, the stimulus for a particular thread can be provided by, for example, an image, a video, a recording, etc.

If you would like to see an example of Lefora in action here's forum I've set up specially for users of this wiki: Collaborative Professional Development. Please use the forum to see what this application looks & feels like from the user perspective and also to add any comments you may have about this wiki experiment, or just to say Hi!

Here's a teaching activity for use with forums and business English students. Personal Profile

An alternative which you might like to check out is talk4you. Here's a link to a forum discussion I've started using this tool. You will need to sign in to post a reply.

If you know of other free forum hosting services or if you have some ideas for activities please add them below.

Other applications & activity ideas

-

-