Simpson, Erik. “Threaded Discussion on the Internet and in the Classroom: Problems of Translation and an Approach to Emergence.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. 36.2 (Autumn 2003): 32-39.

In “Threaded Discussion on the Internet and in the Classroom, Erik Simpson explores the reason behind a lack of student participation in threaded discussions required for their classes. Simpson posits that the reason for this student apathy emerges from the structure required within class message boards that force students to focus on a specific topic for only a specific amount of time. In the article, written by a college English instructor for other English instructors, Simpson attempts to explain the phenomenon of minimal participation and provide a means of improving this participation. To aid teachers in creating more active discussion threads, Simpson demonstrates that allowing students more flexibility in their posting by mimicking the open forum of online discussions provides better responses.

Though Simpson’s article is intriguing and posits an important point in the development of classroom skills, this study does not correlate to my research in any fashion. Working with message boards is a similar concept to what he discusses in the article, but these boards are not terminal, so the work in Simpson’s article does not advance my scholarship.