[LINK] RFI: Suitable Tools for an Electronic Forum

[Tom Worthington]

On 25/6/21 9:47 am, Karl Auer wrote:

> ... Slack, Discord and Mattermost excellent for discussion, but the
> results have to be extracted by someone and summarised. ...

Yes, the ANU computer project students use these tools in their group
projects. But there are students assigned to take minutes. Also I have 
used them with hackerthons, where there are up to 700 participants. 
There has to be a large team of people to keep it from descending into 
chaos.

> Zoom and related meeting/webinar tools are also great for "face to 
> face" discussion, but they are real-time. ...

One of my students doing a project on synchronous/asynchronous leaning
in 2019 (pre-COVID19) found Facebook's video forum was used by one US
university professor. This was interesting as not only can you text chat
in real time while live to air, if you add comments later, these are 
synchronized with the point in the recorded video you are
watching.

> ... otherwise disappear when the meeting closes. ...

You can have the video conferecne with one tool and the text discussion 
in another, such as Slack, which allows the discussion to continue after 
the live event.

> One quite effective method I've used in a couple of contexts is
> Google Docs. ...

Yes, members of the ASCILITE Mobile Learning Special Interest Group used
Google Docs during Zoom discussions to brainstorm papers for a
conference. We are doing it again this year.

I have also used this approach as a student on a group project with a
half dozen others around the world. Just before the deadline we were
live on videoconferencing all editing our submission at the same time.
But this requires a level of skill, trust and discipline.

> For most serious discussion purposes, email is probably still the
> best way to work. ...

Some sort of online forum which keeps track of the discussion and can
send summaries out by email, I suggest is better. That can be used in
real time alongside a video conference and keep track of all the
input. Slack comes close to that, by having video built in.


-- 
Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP IP3P http://www.tomw.net.au
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