Discussion Forums for Small Business, Corporate and Educational Institutes

	Government Agency This government agency’s Information Systems group, who is responsible for all IT activities within their Operating Unit, was in very short supply of human resources, as is the case with most government IT groups. One of their goals in changing their system is to allow divisions to take more responsibility for their information dissemination. Their in-house forum product supports only one forum and requires centralized administration by one person, an IT Specialist within the Information Systems group. When an additional forum is required, this individual has to create an entire new user interface and database. This can result in significant delays to the Agency’s customers. Read the full story.
	eConcordia eConcordia places much emphasis on on-line communication and user-friendly software. Staff members grew tired of difficult programs that required a great deal of maintenance and tended to be inconsistent in all the same ways. Past discussion boards required users to log in twice-once to log in to the eConcordia portal, and then again to gain access to the actual discussion board. Read the full story.
	Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The Distance Education Division was up to the challenge of making online learning as effective as possible. Two related challenges became apparent immediately: how to create a sense of community among online students and how to relieve professors from the burden of exploding email in-boxes. Read the full story.