People often ask me to name my favorite online teaching tool. My answer is always the same: Hands down, it’s online discussion forums. As a veteran online teacher, I view discussion forums as the meat ...

Creating a classroom community where meaningful conversations can happen isn’t easy—it’s an ongoing process that takes time. But using online discussion tools can be one great way to help your ...

The new question-of-the-week is: What are specific strategies, lessons, and tools that you have used to encourage asynchronous classroom discussions in a hybrid or remote learning environment? In the ...

I’ve been teaching a large online class for the first time this semester, and as the course involves looking at a number of challenge interactive works and games I put a lot of emphasis on discussion ...

Heather VanMouwerik is a doctoral candidate in Russian History at the University of California, Riverside. Follow her @hvanmouwerik or check out her website. When I was an undergraduate, in those ...

Most courses at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) include discussion board assignments each week. In fact, you might have discussion boards in every course of your degree program. So, why are ...

Participation in a discussion board is among the most common assignments in online courses. We typically ask our students to respond to a reading or a prompt and then reply to several of their ...

For many students, participating in online class discussions feels like a chore—a box to check off for participation points rather than a lively dialogue. “I go in there and do it because I have to,” ...

Over the weekend, edX announced some changes to the features in their discussion forums, and the changes illuminate some interesting issues in student behavior, pedagogy, and instructional design. On ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Preston Cooper writes about the economics of higher education. Despite the aspirations of many leaders in higher education, most ...

The online platform Piazza currently hosts online discussion forums for around 100 Stanford courses, giving thousands of students the opportunity to remotely ask and answer questions about course ...

Take a moment and imagine your ideal scenario for a classroom discussion. Your students are both perennially engaged yet conscientious; all are equally eager to raise their hands and share in ...