I feel forums are a little like classroom environments. Not many like to go first.
Shoulder tapping people to make a contribution may provide them with the confidence to put forward and answer.
Once one or two have made a comment, others can now see where the conversation appears to be heading, and contribute with more confidence (assuming they follow in the same direction).
The more you read about a topic, the more you get drawn into it, ergo the more you are likely to feel connected and driven to comment.
As the conversation gains momentum you may start to get people who are more willing to post less conforming opinions, as their voice becomes one of many, rather than the only one. (Ruth)

This is a challenging problem. I agree with Ruth that people do not like to go first. Certainly, in my case I often wonder if what I have to say is worth posting as often, I don’t feel my opinions are particularly interesting.

Having strong discussion leads and cues certainly help to keep conversations focused and encourage reflective comments. I do not have the answer to making people participate other than providing many opportunities for people to respond and hopefully they find some topics motivating and want to respond. I think you have done this very well in your forum.

I had posted a response, but for some reason the forum seems to be eating them.

“Your discussion forum is starting to feel like a ghost town, with only a couple of brave souls posting. How would you lure those ‘invisible’ students out of hiding?”

I wouldn’t attempt to pull invisible students out for participation. Heres why:

1.There is research on community of practice lurkers – individuals who dont participate but just access and read information – and they are not bad or a threat to the community, infect the largest communities, such as researchgate, have the highest amount of lurkers. A high lurker count actually means there is a large group of people who are interested in the topic.

2. Lurking is the natural consequence – when a community gets large, it also gets redundant (the same topic has already been covered). Therefore lurking is likely to increase with the size of the community.

3. Lurking can mean that the community forum is working – by having a forum that accessible, understandable, and insightful – there may be no need for further interaction.

4. Lurkers often identify themselves as community members. People may see them as negative, but they see themselves as participating as they are partaking.

5. Pulling lurkers out, again may perpetuate the untrue and negative stereotypes, such as that lurkers are essentially a bad group of people who are intellectual thief’s and free riders.

For more info see the following links/resources:
Sun, N., Rau, P. P. L., & Ma, L. (2014). Understanding lurkers in online communities: A literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 38, 110-117.
Yeow, A., Johnson, S., & Faraj, S. (2006). Lurking: legitimate or illegitimate peripheral participation?. ICIS 2006 Proceedings, 62.

Thanks
Ted

Humorous starters.

How would I lure students in?

Perhaps this isnt a helpful answer – but I wouldn’t bother with trying to solve this “problem”. From some research I did for our course I came across research that made it pretty clear that communities of practice/learning are generally full of lurkers, and infact this may be more a feature than a bug. Generally larger communities also tend to have more lurkers. If research suggests that the most successful communities are incredibly large and accessible, and that the vast majority of users are actually lurkers, are we categorizing the lack of participation as bad without evidence? From my research it appears that lurking is more a stage of where a community is, rather than its because there is an intellectual theif amongst us. Rather than building a community/learning for active participation, perhaps we should instead think – well if this is how it works (that lurkers are here to stay in this age of the internet and ever growing communities), how do we make it better for the lurkers? If we think about a community with alot of members, there will be alot of redundancy (meaning people may search for something that already has an interaction/info/answer/rational). I think what we should do is focus more on making each engagement better (quality wise) for all readers, rather than trying to increase active posters (if we’re talking about an online course/forum).

For more info please see these articles:
Yeow, A., Johnson, S., & Faraj, S. (2006). Lurking: legitimate or illegitimate peripheral participation?. ICIS 2006 Proceedings, 62.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/301354819.pdf

Sun, N., Rau, P. P. L., & Ma, L. (2014). Understanding lurkers in online communities: A literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 38, 110-117.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563214003008 (no link via google scholar, please use an available online library)

Thanks
Ted