Use the following strategies to promote active participation in your online discussions:

• Breaking the ice. Create a "Brief Bio" or "Introduce Yourself" Forum as way to start the interaction with a familiar topic and allow students to get to know one another.
• Instructor posts. Pay especial attention in composing your first week's post, they set the tone for the rest of the course.
  Ask carefully designed questions. Well-crafted questions help students perceive value in spending the time necessary to participate in the threaded discussions.
• Quality over quantity. The quality of your questions is more important than how many questions you ask. If you pose too many queries, they run the risk of being seen as "busy work." Focus on questions that encourage students to think critically. (Refer to the above sections on formal and informal questioning techniques).
• Require participation. Assign points for student postings in discussion Forums, and make interaction in the Discussion Board a significant part of the student's grade. For example, you can have students respond to an assignment question and require that they also reply to at least three other students' postings. Peer critiques also encourage students to improve the quality of their work.
• Leave no question unanswered. Respond to all questions to the instructor in a timely manner to maintain the flow of the conversations.
• Timing. Allow adequate time between posing a question and requiring students to research, analyze, and compose a quality response (--typically three or four days). In addition, provide adequate time for students to responds each other. (Typically a couple of days).
• Save your best posts. Take a few moments to copy your best posts into a Word file and save them to be reused in another course. This will reduce the time you spend on composing quality questions and answers.
• Relevant topics. Create assignments and Discussion Board Forums that rely on the material in the textbook and lectures as means to reinforce and expand on what students are learning.
• Make the topic intriguing Select assignments that are relevant to students' experiences and backgrounds. Provide a variety of topics to ensure that there is something interesting for everyone.
• Use case studies. Real-world scenarios draw students into discussions. The more relevant and controversial the case study, the more likely it will generate interest in participating in the discussions.
• Use announcements to clarify. If students aren't participating sufficiently or other general problems in the online discussions arise, use Blackboard Announcements to clarify your expectations. (For instructions on how to create an Announcement in Blackboard, click Creating Announcements).
• Allow anonymous posts. Some topics are highly sensitive in nature and students will be reluctant to express their opinions unless they can protect their identity.
• Require online journals. Ask students to record their thoughts about the course content and their online learning experiences. Web logs (Blogs) and Web pages can be used to make these journals available for all students in the course to read.
• Get involved in the activity. Keep students on track by gently nudging them back on track, if they stray to far from the topic. When you participate in a forum, providing feedback, guidance, and encouragement, students tend to become more involved.
• Take virtual fieldtrips. Create assignments that require students to venture out on the Internet and conduct research, reporting the results back to their classmates. (For details, click How to Conduct Internet Research).
• Offer online guest speakers. Arrange for experts to answer student questions in chat rooms or discussion boards.
• Foster collaboration. Let students assist each other with difficult assignments or work together in a group to accomplish a common goal. (See Working with Online Groups).
• Create a virtual student lounge. Open a forum for students to communicate freely about topics on their minds to promote a "virtual community."
• Set up a teacher question forum. Give students the opportunity to post queries directly to the instructor, letting the whole class benefit from your responses.
• Summarize the discussion. At the end of a discussion, write a brief statement about what has been discovered and what was missed in the online discussion. This is your opportunity to emphasize critical points and stress conclusions.

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