In this way, hundreds of people can take part in asynchronous discussions without the usual obstacles of cost, distance, and time. Messages contributed to a newsgroup, called postings, are divided into separate categories according to message subjects. A contributor can choose either to reply to an existing posting or to start another discussion by posting a new message on a different subject. The messages relating to each discussion subject are organized chronologically in a thread so that they can be read as a conversation. In each forum, only students, instructors, and guest speakers in a particular course are invited to participate in the discussion.
Postings can be anonymous, signed, or displayed with a photograph of the author.
In this way, students and teachers in large lecture courses can become more familiar with each other and can associate ideas with faces and names. Instructors customize their own fora, which gives them control over discussions and allows them to organize postings into categories that reflect their curriculum. Some instructors chose to have one forum for general discussion and one for each major reading. Several instructors assigned different students to lead a forum each week of the quarter. One type of assignment that has proven successful is a creative, group-participation exercise that requires students to return to a particular forum over a period of days to keep checking on the progress of the activity.