Discussion Boards/Forums
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Discussion boards and online discussion fora can be a useful way of supplementing the formal meetings of a research team. Features of the commonly used software mean that postings made to the forum or board are archived and can be accessed again at a later date and discussions can be 'threaded' (separated into distinct topics) making separate dialogues easier to follow. The disadvantages of using discussion boards or online fora are that users have to go to a web address and log in to read correspondence, although some automatically forward posts to email – and allow posts to forum through email. If you plan to use discussion boards and for a as a method of communication for your research team, the following guidelines may be helpful: If users agree set up email forwarding so that posts to the discussion board also arrive in users' email.
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