ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the use of online discussion boards in college mathematics courses. After a brief discussion of the utility of this component of an online mathematics course, the chapter presents results of an informal survey of online instructors in which they give examples of discussion board prompts that were or were not effective in their various mathematics courses. The prompts are categorized according to The Strands of Mathematical Proficiency (Kilpatrick, Swafford & Findell, 2001) so that readers can choose which of these ideas they might want to implement according to the specific goals they hope to achieve. The chapter concludes with recommendations for online faculty and common characteristics of successful prompts.
