Couple things:
1) As a person who uses messageboards a lot, I think they're more helpful than chat rooms. The reason is that there's more structure, and people will tend to talk more about certain things, and that thing will be under such and such a folder. And it's there to be found. For example, if this were a chatroom and someone posed the question, "LSC should have a messageboard" the topic would be up for a couple minutes, we'd talk about, and then move on. But with a messageboard talking about a chatroom, you have this thread and posts under it, people discussing it, and at the same time, you can look at other threads with other posts under it. Plus the digression factor is minimal.
2) Not for anything, but isn't that 800 that came with the course 24 hours operational? If someone needs an on the spot, "emergency PRing" assistance, the 800 number would probably be more helpful, no?
3) I actually think the response time to questions is pretty decent. This board isn't the fastest, but is faster than some other boards I've been to.
Back to procrastinating on my paper =)
-Ramon http://razor.ramon.com