One of the more significant challenges online faculty encounter is engendering sustainable and in-depth threads within the discussion forum.  A critical element of effective online instruction is the ability of online faculty to create an environment in which meaningful interaction and dialogue can occur. Too often, unfortunately, responses in the discussion forum fail to reach the level of dialogue, and instead are comprised of "one-and-done" replies and "I agree" type responses. These types of posts add little to the learning process as they are merely functions students preform to receive credit, and the lack of edifying post can cause many students to become frustrated with the online format, which can negatively affect their desire to continue their education, much less participate in their current class.

Identifying strategies to promote quality discussion posts is therefore a crucial aspect of the online instructor's role. Developing such strategies, however, can be difficult. Zingaro and Oztok (2012) completed a study in which they used the current themes present in literature concerning asynchronous communication in online classroom to test six possible variables that could have an effect on the level of student participation in discussion forums. The variables tested were posting dates, posts by active or inactive participants, reading ease, word count, posts by instructors or students, and posts containing a question.

The results from the study indicated that early posts, asking questions, and posts by active participants had a positive effect toward increasing student involvement in the discussion forum, while reading ease, the position of the poster (instructor or student), and word count did not affect student participation. Extrapolating from the results online faculty should post early in the module and encourage their student to post early as well, be sure to ask questions as this provides a prompt for students as well as attempt to motivate students to include questions-especially open-ended ones-in their posts, and be frequent and active posters within the discussion forum setting. The ease of reading or level of complexity of post did not seem to have much of an effect to increasing participation. This result, however, should be localize to the individual class as higher level courses with intrinsically more complex posts may or may not produce increased level of participation (Zingaro & Oztok, 2012). Whether a post is by a student or instructor also did not have much of an effect toward student participation. Although this might take some of the pressure off the instructor, there are still questions about whether instructors receive higher quality responses to their posts as opposed to student posts. Word count or length of posts additionally did not seem to have a substantive effect to the number of responses received, but the quality and relevancy of longer posts was not included in the study.

Although the findings listed above can provide some general strategies for online instructors to increase the level of participation and the quality of posts within the discussion forum, each course is unique and demands instructors develop creative and effective methods for developing sustainable, in-depth, and edifying dialogue within their respective classroom discussion forums. 

Thanks,

Eric

Reference:

Zingaro, D., & Oztok, M (2012). Interaction in an asynchronous online course: A synthesis of quantitative predicator. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 16, 71-82. Retrieved from http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/jaln_main