Web-based discussions can be used to provide information to students and to conduct online class discussions. MIT supports the following two types of Web-based discussions.
MIT Forums is a conferencing service for Web-based (not email-based) discussions. Access is controlled by MIT Web certificates. The host of a Forums conference can be set up to control access to the discussions. To learn more and to view a Demo Conference, go to the page MIT Online Discussion Forums.
Transactions in the Athena Discuss meetings can be read on the Web, in HTML format, through the Discuss WWW Gateway. A Discuss meeting archive can be fed through email. To be readable on the Web, access control within the Discuss meeting must be set to "world-readable". Access to discuss web gateway meetings can be restricted to indviduals or groups using SSL certificates.