Russell Hunt wrote: > It may be worth explaining here what those of us working on this > here at St. Thomas would want such a program to do (and why we > finally decided we didn't want to be a beta test site for CONNECT). He went on to provide a very helpful list (thanks, Russ) of ways that he uses various communications tools in his classes--tools he fondly referred to as "our kludge." Both First Class and Textra Connect attempt to replace kludge with an integrated system. I haven't seen First Class (I'd love to try it, though, Marcie; I'll talk to you privately), but I thought I should correct the record about Connect (which I admittedly haven't used except in demo form; corrections to my corrections are welcome). Connect provides one-to-one e-mail like Pegasus Mail, one-to-many e-mail like a listserv, discussion groups organized around assignments (each assignment can have a different discussion group, and the "assignment" can as loosely interpreted as you choose), and a limited form of group editing (no master document collates all the changes). Students can post drafts to the group and annotate each others' work. Instructors can attach "forms", directly editable writing fragments, to assignments. Instructors can collect essays on-line, grade them using annotations, and return graded papers on-line. Connect is umbilically attached to a word-processing environment, either Word for Windows 6.0 or Textra (DOS), which is, I think, a strength. Even though I am describing a later version of Connect than the one Russ Hunt saw, a couple of his comments about the earlier version still apply. It does tend to put the instructor in the middle of things (only the instructor can initiate an assignment/discussion thread), and it also lacks the kind of multilateral editing available in other systems, if by "multilateral" we mean a group-edited project in which the master document reflects all editing changes. It also, I think, falls short of the threaded discussions that a BBS or a conferencing package provides, unless one thinks of Connect's assignment-oriented discussion groups as equivalent to discussion threads. Thanks to all for your feedback about conferencing software. Your help is timely and MUCH appreciated. Darrell Bethune East Kootenay Community College [log in to unmask]