An "online discussion" is a written conversation that unfolds across days, weeks or months.

It’s a kind of group email. It differs from email in that more than two people can easily participate, follow along, build on the "threads" of the conversation, store and retrieve what they’ve said.

Is an online discussion just like email? No. Is it just like a spoken discussion? No. It has its own rules, its own etiquette, its own keys to success. For much more on online discussions and how to lead one that truly encourages learning—without doubling your workload as a teacher—check out the Faculty Web Book we keep touting.

Now, where will your discussion take place? In software designed especially for this purpose. Do you need course management software? No, you do not. In fact, numerous discussion software packages that are very low cost are actually superior–yes, better, easier, more effective–than the ones provided by the leading course management software companies.

If you are like us and want the very best software for your purpose, we’ll tell you where to find the best discussion software in the world today.

The software products we are about to show you are all incredibly good. Incredibly easy. And, incredibly, they’re all cheap.

They make it possible for you to hold meaningful interactions with any group of people, whether teammates or course participants, no matter where they are or what time of day they are available to contribute. You can communicate on a single topic or several. With all your participants at once or small study groups. For a week, a month, or an entire semester.

And it won’t cost you, or your customers and students, an arm and a leg.

For example, check out Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, Yuku, and My Free Forum.

Google Groups

Google Groups is one of the e-mail list services we mentioned earlier as a way to put your course files on the Web. Google Groups allows you to either visit your groups or receive update emails to keep track of what’s going on.

Yahoo Groups

Yahoo Groups is the other e-mail list service we mentioned earlier as a way to put your course files on the Web. The software that handles forums in Yahoo Groups is plenty good enough for asynchronous discussions. Remember, Yahoo Groups has three options for monitoring group activity: 1) you receive an email every time someone leaves a message in the discussion, 2) you receive a summary email once a day, or 3) you must visit the group Web site to see if there were postings. Yahoo Groups is free but it also has banner ads.

Yuku

Yuku is a web-based (no downloads or installations), customizable and configurable discussion software that is HTML compatible. It has profanity filters and the ability to link/integrate it directly into your course Web site. It also happens to be available in German and Spanish. Price? Unbelievably, free if you’ll put up with ads and only 7 bucks for 6 months or 12 bucks for a whole year if you want to get rid of the ads.

MyFreeForum.Org

MyFreeForum.Org is a UK vendor offering free hosting of phpBB, one of the most popular open source discussion boards available. It’s advertising supported, of course, but they are mostly banner ads at the top and the bottom and there aren’t many of them.

Hot Tip: Among the services we’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, Community Zero also offers pretty good built-in discussion software.

Can’t stand the ads?

Don’t be turned off by the ads on the discussion pages, if there are any. They don’t interfere with the discussion in any way. You just write an exciting discussion question, post it in the free software discussion space, and invite your participants to join you there. However, if you’re willing to pay a license fee and want even more flexibility in your discussion software—without any ads at all—then check out these discussion packages.

WebBoard

Originally released in 1995, WebBoard was an early promoter of communication, sharing, and the entire concept of electronic community. Morphed into Akiva, the current version of WebBoard runs in the 4 to 5 figure range if you want it on your own server. Hardly a bargain. It’s a wonder they can stay in business with all the perfectly terrific open source products available (see below).

However, many people swear by WebBoard. You can give them a try at Onvix.Net, where you may purchase web site hosting that includes WebBoard starting at $35.00 a month depending on how much storage space you need.

Discus

Created in 1997, Discus is currently used by over 100,000 customer sites and will run under nearly any web server configuration using Unix or Windows servers. Discus has proven to be highly scalable and highly stable.

Discus Freeware is the free version. It offers several levels of security, plus some flexibility in the look and feel.

Discus Pro has even more features and requires a one-time license fee of $150. Discusware will install Discus Pro on your in-house server for only 80 bucks.

Advertisement: For best results in any online discussion, purchase a copy of our Faculty Web Book and check out the guidelines on participation and facilitation. Then sit back and watch the discussion unfold (with a few judiciously placed facilitations by you, of course).

WWWBoard

If you feel up to a moderate technical challenge, you may want to check out WWWBoard. It’s free, but requires some programming knowledge to install and manage. It’s available for download at Matt’s Script Archive

WWWBoard lets you "thread" discussions, sort messages by author or date, and archive past messages. We think WWWBoard is the easiest to use discussion software we’ve found, and it is especially good for teaching because it allows you to quickly see the entire conversation in a single web page. No more clicking around to try to follow the train of thought. It’s all there in sorted order at the click of a mouse. Of all the asynchronous discussion software we’ve used at FutureU over the years, we like this one the best for its simplicity and its ability to see an entire discussion all on a single web page. (Want to know more about threaded discussions? You guessed it. We cover that in detail in our Faculty Web Book.)

Hot Tips: Here are two more Hot Tips that will enrich every online discussion:

•  Plan for your asynchronous online discussion to unfold across a longer span of time than you might need in the classroom. For example, a one-hour classroom discussion might take three to five days to unfold online.


•  Give each discussion topic a start and stop date. Discussions with no boundaries seldom take off. Even if they do, they usually fizzle out without a sense of "completion.".

claude and Gail

Next up: “What about those popular open-source discussion boards?”