Using Usenet Newsgroups for Class Purposes?

grape jelly asks: "One of my jobs this summer is to help out the chemistry (eek) department figure out how to best introduce and use the newsgroups with the intro courses. A little work has been done by a couple professors here, however, it mostly has been unsuccessful. After surfing the 'Net looking for what people have already done, I have come to the conclusion that most professors either don't use a course newsgroup or haven't really published any of their results. Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to what we could do to solve some of our problems? (Primarily motivating the students to learn to use the course newsgroup, then making sure they use it throughout the semester) Any specific experience from students (or professors, especially) would be very desirable." (Read on...)

While a nice idea, I think educators would be better off using web-based discussion boards for their classes. Discussions can be presented without the limitations of plain text(HTML is useful for something you know), and everyone can use a browser, whereas this isn't necessarily true for newsreaders. However, if educators have a working communications system between themselves and their students and they are using newsgroups to do it, then more power to 'em!