CIDR, Catalyst, and PETTT have worked together with UW instructors to plan and assess their uses of the EPost online threaded discussion tool in their classes. Based on our work with these instructors, we have developed the following set of questions as a guide to help instructors promote student learning through their design, use, and assessment of online discussion, and we also have provided links to selected additional resources.

Each question on this page is also a link that takes you to additional considerations related to that question. In many cases these considerations are accompanied by links to Student Comments. Comments in blue indicate, from the students' perspective, how these uses of the tool help them learn; comments in red indicate challenges that may come up.