The study explored the effectiveness of a discussion support taxonomy used in a course in which graduate students served as online discussion leaders. The students' ability to effectively use the taxonomy as a support tool to facilitate the discussions was examined. A content analysis of the discussion transcripts was conducted, and findings indicated that students felt most successful using support strategies that were focused on telling their classmates that they were making useful posts, some strategies may be more effective during different times in the semester and, among others, that requiring a minimum number of posts for students is an effective strategy, but not effective for discussion leaders. (Contains 3 tables.)