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Have you ever used online discussion forum or something similar for students of your course? (Or, if you are a student, have you attended a class, where something like this was used?)

If yes, I'd like to learn more about your experience. In particular, I am interested in following questions:

  • What software did you use? (In particular, possibility to type math formulas is important.)
  • What you consider to be benefits/drawbacks of this approach?
  • Are there some ways to motivate students to be involved in such a forum?

Any additional comments and suggestions are welcome.

NOTE 1: I am aware that this is an open-ended question which does not have single right answer, but I think this question might be of interest for people here. And we had some similar questions, e.g. questions about various computer programs used for drawing math diagrams.

NOTE 2: Although I thought about posting a question like this before, one of the reason I'm posting this now is that we had recently a related question on meta (which was closed).

My experience with such fora:

  • A colleague of mine used MODx and MimeTeX. To motivate students, he gave points for posting solutions on the forum.
  • This semester I have tried phpBB where I added some Mathjax support. However, the people who wrote most contributions to the forum were me and the TAs.
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I've flagged for moderator attention and asked to make this CW. (Since there is not a single right answer.) – Martin Sleziak Jun 5 '12 at 8:50
We have recently discussed which question are suitable here and which for academia.SE; see meta. I've posted this here, since mathematical formulas are important for me; but if you think that it would be better there, I do not object to moving the question. (And of course, I also understand that there is a possibility that a question like this might get closed.) – Martin Sleziak Jun 5 '12 at 9:03
I know that few courses here at Stanford use this website called [Piazza][1]. I have never been part of any course using Piazza and I do not know how it supports math formulas etc. [1]: piazza.com – user17762 Jun 5 '12 at 9:07
@Marvis: Wikipedia article about Piazza mentions that it is possible to use LaTeX formatting, so it seems that there is some support for typing mathematics. – Martin Sleziak Jun 5 '12 at 14:03
I can confirm that Piazza supports LaTeX and utilizes the $$ $$ delimiters. I've used it for several classes in the past (not math classes), and would recommend it. – Brandon Carter Jun 5 '12 at 15:51

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