Synchronous Activities

Asynchronous Activities

On-line and Interactive Journals. Web-based forums (like Web Caucus or HyperNews), newsgroups, or emailing lists (for example, listservs) are asynchronous communication activities that can be used as "interactive journals." Like traditional journals, teachers can assign specific writing projects for students-- for example, responding to class readings. However, on-line journals are potentially interactive because other students in the class can read their colleagues' responses and write messages based on them. And remember-- you don't have to carry on-line journals to your office or home with you!

Class news / announcements / distribution of materials. A variety of asynchronous communication activities can be used by teachers to announce things to classes, to distribute assignments, to update schedules and other course materials, etc.

Student Peer Review. Asynchronous communication has a lot of potential applications for peer review. This is especially true with web-based forums (like Web Caucus or HyperNews) or newsgroups, where smaller groups of students can post essays and peer responses to the essays as individual threads of discussion. Besides expanding the boundary of the traditional classroom, asynchronous student peer review also has the advantage of asking student readers to write about their responses to their colleagues' texts, and it gives student writers a written response from their colleagues to help in revising their own writing.

Analyzing Newsgroup/Listserv Discourse Practices. The hundreds of thousands of active Internet newsgroups and electronic mailing listservs represent excellent sites of discourse to be examined and described by students. Ask students to join a newsgroup or listserv of their choice as an active participant while they analyze and consider the style of writing and discursive practices of the group.
Daniel Anderson has an excellent site for doing this very activity; it's called The Newsgroup Workshop

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