In teaching for a number of schools, I have found that the way in which discussion boards are structured have a significant effect on student interaction. For instance, it is the requirement of one school that students must post an initial response to the DB by Thursday and respond to two other students by Monday (in a Tues-Mon class week) in each of two discussion threads for each week. I am required to respond to every student post between the two posts by the end of the week. Another school I teach for requires the same student participation (in a Mon-Sun class week with the initial post due by Wednesday.) I am required to make at least one post on five separate days during the week to each thread, but there is no requirement for responding to individual students. For which of the two would you expect more student interaction? I have found that student interactivity is significantly greater in the second scenario and as a result I try to structure my responses in the first scenario along the same lines while meeting the criteria for the school. Interestingly, this does not seem to have much of an effect in increasing student interactivity at the first school. I guess this is leading me to a question, which is do you think that students at a given school are conditioned to participate in a certain way? If so, how can we change this pattern of participation?