Countries like India are engaged in exploring appropriate ways of tackling the urgent problem of educating their large and growing populations in relatively little time and with limited resources. Against this background, achieving universal primary education is a major concern. If this Millennium Development Goal is to be achieved, the empowerment of teachers is necessary. Considering the large number of such personnel to be trained, educationists have turned their attention to open and distance learning. In distance education methods, educationists now acknowledge the liberating possibilities of non-print media, which have the potential to surmount physical obstacles, as well as break the constraints of traditional classroom teaching. The development of information and communication technologies has spawned a number of innovations in open and distance learning. In the School of Education at Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, there have been attempts to bring about transformation by using innovative approaches. Creating discussion forums in the regional language is an innovation that has been used and tested. Experimentation and research in this regard has been conducted for the past three years. This article shares the various experiments that have been attempted, the strategies that have been adopted, the results of these experimentations and the lessons that have been learned thereby. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)