Here are sample projects that could be carried out by email, listserv, or forum.   Each involves responding to assigned reading for a course.

• For a picture of the WebBoard layout only, click "WebBoard Sample" .  This forum, as you can see from the static image, includes separate groups of students; such groups are also very easy to set up in Blackboard.  The forum on "Dover Beach" eventually included group members from 3 different colleges, which Blackboard may or may not be able to do, depending on the security codes and methods used by the separate colleges.  Consult your local help desk about forming groups across sections or among colleges.  Directions for a forum using groups on an open web made with Front Page can be seen in the next example.
• a Front Page forum on a course reading is archived for your viewing.  See directions for group members as part of this archive.
• a Web Course in a Box forum on a course reading: This page adapts an archive of a WCB forum to show you what threading looks like.  Blackboard uses a somewhat less open and more cumbersome system in that you now have to click open and discussion and then click open a thread to see the lists of replies for each (as of 2008).

Web forums that anyone can use on a large variety of topics are indexed at Google Groups.  Click the phrase to take a peek and search.