When facilitating an online discussion, it is important to maintain the role of "guide" rather than "expert". When directing a discussion, glean quotes from discussion participants that highlight a direction you want your discussion to go and ask questions that deepen their thinking in a given discussion thread. When crafting questions for your participants carefully examine what you want students to learn through an inquiry. Avoid asking too many questions at once, but instead carefully craft one or two questions that are directly related to a particular discussion thread. In order to keep a dialogue moving forward, encourage contributing participants to end their posts with a question. Be explicit about how you will evaluate participants' posts.