ABSTRACT: Online teaching and learning has grown exponentially in the past decade, with asynchronous online courses emerging as one of the more popular modes of online learning. This evolution has only accelerated over the past couple of years due to COVID-19. With the move to online education, the in-persondiscussions of the traditional classroom have been replaced by Online Discussion Forums. Amendments to The Higher Education Act of 1965 [1] led to the advent of Online Program Management providers creating on-line asynchronous courses for higher education, which uniformly utilized a “discussion” forum each week as an assigned activity to meet the Higher Education Act guidelines; whereinRegular and Substantive Interaction [2] emerged as a significant guideline that distinguished distance education from correspondence education, and thus, Regular and Substantive Interaction became a key determinate for students’ ability to access Title IV funds. The unanswered question is if these forms of interactions enrich and improve the learning process. This paper analyzes trends in asynchronous Online Discussion Forum assignments in terms of what could make them more robust, intentionally relevant, and in alignment with the 21st-century scholar.

KEYWORDS –Asynchronous, communications, e-learning, interactive learning, LMS, online discussion forums, online learning.