Getting students to participate in discussion is a perennial challenge for all teachers. The virtual classroom faces the same challenge; indeed, in the virtual world, the discussion really is the classroom. One cannot simply retreat to an all-lecture format because there are no lectures. If the class doesn't talk, the classroom essentially doesn't exist. Making discussion a significant part of the total grade helps, but for some students this just makes it worse, for they feel they must come up with something profound and insightful and if they cannot, they simply don't talk at all.

Another challenge, seemingly unrelated to the first, concerns supplemental readings. We all know what that our students read "supplemental" and immediately interpret it to mean "don't have to buy it, don't have to read it." This is frustrating for us because supplemental readings provide important grist for the classroom mill. We often assign them in the hopes of stimulating class discussion. We do not require them, in part because of workload or high book prices or combinations thereof. But if we don't require them, the students pass them by completely.

Happily, on the Net, everything is different. More and more raw material is being put online, and it's free, so cost is not a factor. Workload is still an issue, but it's a challenge that can be met. By tying the supplemental reading directly into participation in discussion, we make turn "supplemental" into "useful".

This paper presents one tactic for encouraging participation that uses supplmental readings as the mechanism. The exercise goes by the name of "Trails".