Do colleges have discussion boards of a nature as this board, politicalforum.com? If so, are they heavily moderated? Are students allowed free, unfettered expression or are they expected to regurgitate and incorporate what they heard in class in their discussions?
Colleges don't run discussion boards that are open to the public. There will be several discussion boards internal to the college, such as faculty discussion lists, or class discussion lists. On a well-run discussion list, open, respectful exchange of ideas will be encouraged. On a badly run one it won't.
I've been to college and I didn't see a discussion forum in any of them. In general, discussion boards are dying out. The switch of consumer internet access usage from desktop computers to mobile phones has not been kind to discussion boards.
Quite true. And the quality of these discussions has been going down. It's hard to have an intellectual discussion when you are interfacing through a phone (takes more effort to type long replies, longer loading times make it much more difficult to do any research). It is like a dumbing down. The opposite of what might have been expected with increasing technology.
