Discuss it with discussion boards and forums

By Bobby Hobgood

This "Teacher Time Saver" looks at free tools for creating Web-based discussions.

I’ve learned my lesson about praising websites that have been in existence for less than a year. When I first began writing this monthly column, one of the first sites I reviewed disappeared from the Web. Another site changed from a free website to a yearly subscription site. This month’s Teacher Time Saver article highlights a productivity tool that has been on the Web for a couple of years now. For those of you are not a “geek like me,” two years in Internet time is a long time!

One of the functions the Web offers us is the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time, and at little or no cost. The most common form of Web-based communication is email. A lesser known communication tool is the discussion forum or bulletin board. Like email, discussion forums are asynchronous tools, allowing a group of individuals to carry on a discussion without contributing to the discussion from the same location and at the same time.

One of the most important advantages of discussion forums is their ability to capture a discussion in the order in which contributions to the discussion occurred. For example, imagine using email to discuss how you and other foreign language teachers in your system will align foreign language instruction from the middle school to the high school. Within this conversation, the Spanish teachers may need to discuss different issues than the French teachers, the German teachers, the Latin teachers or the Japanese teachers. Imagine now that all of these emails come to your inbox in addition to the other email you receive on a daily basis.

QuickTopic is a free online service that allows anyone to create a simple discussion board or “topic.” A discussion board, unlike a discussion forum, does not show messages in a thread, with responses to postings indented to indicate their position in the discussion. Quick Topics does not use a threaded discussion format “to be simple and direct as possible.” Hence each posting appears as a new entry.

Take a look at this sample “topic” I created for this article. Each topic allows the user to receive and submit postings via email. Participants can access the forum in one of two ways: via a link you provide on your webpage that is automatically generated each time you create a topic, or by an email message containing the link.

An added advantage to QuickTopic is that the site does not use any advertising. It is paid for by customization of certain features. QuickTopic has been around for awhile and will likely remain around for awhile since, according to its FAQs, its operating costs are so low. The discussions are private since each topic can not be located via a search engine.

A nice alternative to QuickTopic is the Boards2go.com. This site offers a discussion forum architecture where participants can respond to postings that are then displayed as a threaded discussion. Like QuickTopic, Boards2go is easy to use and costs nothing. It does employ banner advertising, which may not be appealing to some users.

Nevertheless, I think the advantages of a discussion forum make it worth trying this site. Discussion forums archive contributions to a discussion in the order which they are received and without other contributions intermixed that are not related to the topic of discussion. Further, discussion forums allow contributing members to reply to the main topic of discussion or to a message contributed by someone else. Take a look at this example discussion to see for yourself.

Using discussion boards and forums

Since their inception, discussion boards and forums have served a variety of needs. Some are simply basic tools for communicating among group members. Others might be used to supplement class discussions. Discussion forums are often an integral component in the online course environment. Here, students interact with one another to discuss assignments or collaborate on group projects. The University of Tasmania, Australia offers concise information on the various uses of a discussion forum as well as tips for planning for the use of a discussion forum.

Discussion boards and forums can be great tools for sharing discussions, collaborating on group projects and for archiving individual comments for future reference. Successful boards and forums need a moderator, someone who can monitor the discussion. If the conversation dwindles or takes a wrong turn, the moderator’s role is to intervene in a way that is most appropriate for the particular forum. Even if you are not creating a forum as a place for student assignments, this page can get your started as a forum moderator. Whether you need to collaborate with colleagues across a great distance or get feedback on your ideas, discussion boards and forums can be simple solutions for productive conversations.