Although encouraging student participation in online discussions by awarding marks is a common practice, in this study, the authors were given the task of encouraging online participation without doing so.

The authors investigated the amount of online participation, while at the same time ensuring that the quality was of an acceptable standard. In particular, they describe in detail a case study of first-year health sciences students who were introduced to online discussions as part of an information technology/information literacy (IT/IL) stream in their curriculum. The nature of the participation was guided purely by the philosophy and content of the main health sciences curriculum, with no overt reward or punishment system for participation in the online discussions.

The authors’ approach was based on drawing on the methods, philosophy, and content of the mainstream, by ensuring that the students were IT literate, and by asking questions that were important to the students’ course of study that were structured so as to encourage free and open debate.

Finally, the authors provide an adequate analysis of the case study results, which show an acceptable level of equitable participation across the student body. The main conclusion is that effective participation in online discussions can be effectively elicited by curriculum articulation. The paper is generally well written, and a reader can easily understand it without an in-depth knowledge of information science education.