As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves from an urgent public health crisis to an economic catastrophe, higher education institutions are bracing for long-term impact while working around the clock to continue delivering instruction.

Among faculty and institutional leaders, the collective conversation thus far has been largely focused on moving courses to online delivery this term–and understandably so. But what first felt like a crisis of emergency course design is going to very quickly become a course completion crisis. And we need to be ready.

In the eighth annual Disruptor 50 list, CNBC identifies private companies whose breakthroughs are influencing business and market competition at an accelerated pace. They are poised to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic with tech platforms that have the power to dominate. The start-ups making the 2020 Disruptor list are at the epicenter of a world changing in previously unimaginable ways, turning ideas in cybersecurity, education, health IT, logistics/delivery, fintech and agriculture into a new wave of billion-dollar businesses. 

Discussion forums have been a key feature of online and technology-enhanced courses for over 20 years. There is a breadth of information and best practices guidelines on ways to use discussion forums in online learning environments. Online discussion is an important area of research in both the scholarship of teaching and learning and educational technology. Unfortunately, it presents several hurdles to successful implementation.