Student cooperation is by no means guaranteed. For any of these benefits to be conferred, students must contribute to the online community in the first place. Often, online discussion is encouraged through academic assessment; participation grades contingent upon a minimum number of posts to a discussion forum are common. This is made possible, of course, through the Panoptic gaze of the teacher; students know they are being watched, and so they will participate insofar as they must to appease the warden. Genuine conversation may blossom from this infertile ground, but always in a tempered, controlled, limited way.

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Anonymity opens the conversation up, but the challenge then becomes getting the conversation started in the first place. Assessment as an incentive is difficult to implement under these circumstances, as it is difficult to grade content without a clear author. Surreptitious post-tracking or voluntary self-identification allows for evaluation, but defeats the purpose of the exercise entirely. The course, therefore, must be constructed with anonymity at its center, and each activity in the classroom must positively incentivize students to use and critically engage their online resources. The anonymous, online component must make students’ work easier and offer increasing gain for frequent contribution. The anonymous forum must be the path of least resistance for the student.