Flipgrid is a popular video-based discussion tool that has many advantages over an LMS discussion forum. For one, it arranges student postings on a single page rather than in a threaded forum. This makes it good for collecting a variety of independent responses to a question rather than holding a threaded discussion that develops lines of thinking on a topic through student responses to one another. Two, the visual element can make student postings more engaging than reading pages of text. Three, as an independent app, it seems to take students out of the mindset of needing to craft an academic-sounding message for a grade, making student postings more genuine.