{"id":6672646,"date":"2026-03-15T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/?p=6672646"},"modified":"2026-03-10T11:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:22:16","slug":"6672646-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/6672646-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Discussion Boards: Beyond &#8220;All the Research Shows\u2026&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If your school uses a learning management system &#8212; Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle &#8212; you almost certainly have the option of creating <strong>online discussion boards<\/strong> for your students. A typical assignment sounds like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Answer this question, and comment on at least two of your classmates&#8217; answers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In theory, these online discussions offer several benefits:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>They recreate classroom discussions, but better &#8212; all students can participate!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They give students a chance to think, critique, ponder &#8212; time for reflection and deeper learning.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They encourage students to practice writing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Given all these potential benefits, I&#8217;m not surprised that many schools require teachers to use discussion posts. In fact, a friend of mine &#8212; who is required to use them because &#8220;all the research&#8221; says they&#8217;re beneficial &#8212; recently asked me about all that research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I found&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Starting Big<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Often when I write a blog post, I start with one well-done study to see what it says. In this case, I started with Elicit.com &#8212; an AI platform that explores research-informed questions. I asked it to look for randomized controlled studies using active control groups for grades 6-12. I also asked it to focus on &#8220;objective measurements&#8221;: that is, I wanted to highlight <em>what students learned<\/em> in class more than <em>how they felt<\/em> about class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elicit identified the 25 studies it judged most relevant &#8212; although truthfully few met all the criteria I included. From my perspective, here&#8217;s the headline:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Among studies directly comparing online discussion to active in-person instruction with objective measures, findings diverged substantially.&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>More specifically, the discussion boards&#8217; effectiveness depended on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>student characteristics &#8212; grade, background knowledge, socio-economic status, and so forth<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the class topic &#8212; organic chemistry, physics, argumentative writing<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the variable measured &#8212; correcting misconceptions, extended reasoning<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the teachers&#8217; training<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the scaffolding of the discussion prompts<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This sentence also jumped out at me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Effect sizes were larger when implementations included teacher training, curriculum integration, and structured facilitation&nbsp;rather than simply providing platform access. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In brief: when I looked at a lot of studies, I found a muddle. These studies don&#8217;t exactly contradict one another; at the same time, they don&#8217;t add up to a useful or coherent set of recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Zooming In<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Given that a big-picture survey didn&#8217;t provide coherent guidance, I thought I&#8217;d try a more granular approach. A conversation with ChatGPT, for instance, suggested that <strong>the number of posts<\/strong> a student composes doesn&#8217;t correlate with grades. <a href=\"http:\/\/chrome-extension:\/\/efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj\/https:\/\/www.ncolr.org\/jiol\/issues\/pdf\/10.1.1.pdf\">This study<\/a>, by Song and McNary, does reach that conclusion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the one hand, that&#8217;s helpful information. On the other hand, the study includes eighteen graduate students. Graduate students are (on average) more academically motivated and successful than most folks (on average); and, there are only eighteen of them. For that reason, I don&#8217;t draw strong conclusions from this study &#8212; certainly not for middle- and high-school teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AdobeStock_542110337-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6672708\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AdobeStock_542110337-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AdobeStock_542110337-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AdobeStock_542110337-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AdobeStock_542110337-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AdobeStock_542110337-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>ChatGPT also notes that the instructor&#8217;s participation in the discussion board matters. <a href=\"http:\/\/chrome-extension:\/\/efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj\/https:\/\/digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1377&amp;context=ij-sotl&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com\">This study<\/a>, by Richard Ladyshewsky, suggests that students benefit not just from the professor&#8217;s participation, but from &#8220;social presence&#8221;: a focus on building community by, say, using students&#8217; names and sharing personal reflections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This study includes more than 18 students &#8212; it includes data from roughly 100. But like the Song and McNary study it focuses on graduate students. And &#8212; crucially &#8212; its data come from TWO professors: the one who created more &#8220;social presence,&#8221; and the one who created less. By the way, the students who experienced more social presence enjoyed the class more, but didn&#8217;t learn any more. That is: increased social presence predicted student satisfaction &#8212; not academic achievement. Here again, I don&#8217;t think we can draw strong conclusions to help teachers in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Settling Down<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>To summarize the paragraphs above: if I had found a useful set of research-informed discussion board guidelines to offer, I would happily report that finding here. Alas, I simply don&#8217;t think we have a coherent, useful body of on-point research telling us how best to manage online discussion boards &#8230; or even whether or not we should have them. Instead, we have several narrowly tailored studies which don&#8217;t add up to consistent, practical advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hasten to add: this conclusion doesn&#8217;t mean that anyone has done something wrong. Researchers have looked at specific questions, gathered data, crunched numbers, and published it all. That&#8217;s what they&#8217;re supposed to do. If all that crunching doesn&#8217;t add up to good advice, that result doesn&#8217;t mean that researchers shouldn&#8217;t have done the underlying work. It means we haven&#8217;t done enough studies to find the hard-to-detect patterns that might be in there somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead of looking at discussion-post research, I think we should change our approach. Let&#8217;s look more generally for advice drawn from cognitive science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For instance: <strong>working memory<em>. <\/em><\/strong>We know that working memory overload brings learning to a halt. For that reason, we should carefully ensure that any discussion-board assignments don&#8217;t overload WM. We might consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>how straightforward is the discussion-board technology? If the process of completing the assignment requires popping in and out of multiple multi-step threads, then students use their WM to navigate the LMS, not think about the question.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>how many steps do students have to follow to answer the prompt itself? Am I asking a clear enough question for students to manage on their own?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>how much WM load does this assignment create for the teacher? Is the benefit to the student worth those extra demands?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Or: <strong>long-term memory<\/strong>. Do my discussion-board questions require <em>deep processing<\/em>, a.k.a. &#8220;enriched encoding&#8221;? Do they offer students a chance for <em>retrieval practice<\/em>? Is there <em>generative learning<\/em> afoot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I simply ask &#8220;did you like the reading?&#8221; or instruct students to &#8220;write five sentences in response to the poem,&#8221; I&#8217;m probably not requiring a rich enough exploration to merit this use of our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or: <strong>motivation<\/strong>. Self-determination theory tells us that students are motivated by &#8212; among other things &#8212; a sense of <em>relatedness<\/em>: with the material, or each other, or the teacher. Can I create discussion-board questions that foster that kind of relatedness? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reaching beyond cognitive science for a moment, I also want to highlight the importance of <strong>opportunity cost<em>.<\/em><\/strong> My question shouldn&#8217;t be &#8220;do discussion boards accomplish these goals,&#8221; but rather, \u201cDo they accomplish them more effectively than the alternatives?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">To Sum Up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Learning management systems make online discussion boards possible. I don&#8217;t think we (yet) have a broad research pool showing that they&#8217;re <em>beneficial<\/em> in middle- and high-school classrooms. If we want to use them &#8212; or are required to do so &#8212; then we can draw on broad principles of cognitive science to ensure our students learn the most from these tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Song, L., &amp; McNary, S. W. (2011). Understanding Students&#8217; Online Interaction: Analysis of Discussion Board Postings.&nbsp;<em>Journal of Interactive Online Learning<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>10<\/em>(1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ladyshewsky, R. K. (2013). Instructor presence in online courses and student satisfaction.&nbsp;<em>International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>7<\/em>(1), n1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If your school uses a learning management system &#8212; Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle &#8212; you almost certainly have the option of creating online discussion boards for your students. A typical assignment sounds like this: &#8220;Answer this question, and comment on at least two of your classmates&#8217; answers.&#8221; In theory, these online discussions offer several benefits: Given [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6672708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[266,272],"class_list":["post-6672646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-edtech","tag-online-discussion-boards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6672646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6672646"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6672646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6672710,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6672646\/revisions\/6672710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6672708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6672646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6672646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6672646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}