Someone wrote the above question on a list recently – another day and another technology condemned to the virtual graveyard I thought. Didn’t they say that about radio when television became vogue in households some decades ago? However, currently, 88% of the UK population tune into radio at least once a week.

For those that perhaps don’t know, online discussion boards or groups are used in educational settings to facilitate asynchronous communications between learners online. They are far from ‘dead’, and if there is any perceived inactivity on discussion boards, it is not because of the tool per se, but because learners do not see any reason to engage. Many tutors erroneously equate learner inactivity to learner inertia, but actually it is tutor activity that is key to a thriving discussion board, or any other discussion tool for that matter, i.e. Blogs/Wikis etc.

Gilly Salmon has covered this extensively in her book – e-moderating, emphasising that generating engagement online lies very much with the tutor/administrator engaging with the learners from the outset, not just leaving learners to get-by by themselves. So tutors/administrators need to use discussion boards frequently to communicate, post tasks, assignments and check-in with thoughts and comments, and discussion boards will flourish.

Yes, there will always be a problem with a select group of learners lurking and not chipping in at all, but that’s another matter, possibly for another post.  However, the point of the matter is that the question should not be whether discussion boards are dead or ineffective, but whether tutors and administrators are engaging with learners in discussion boards properly.