1	Conducting Effective Discourse Online: The TextWeaver^TM
2	Background Effective online learning requires interactivity through quality discourse. This is usually accomplished in asynchronous text-based discussion forums. Current "Learning Management Systems" focus on dissemination and presentation. Not enough attention is paid to enhancing communication. Can we improve discussion forum software for online communication in education?
3	Problems of Existing Web Forums Composing – Awkward and iinflexible “text box” Keywords – Unreliable indication of message content Retrieving and reviewing – Difficult and time consuming Reuse of discussion materials and content – Not well supported Working offline – Usually impossible
4	What is TextWeaver? TextWeaver is an open source educational computer conferencing environment that allows users to read, compose, categorize, and reuse discussion items flexibly, both online and offline. Technically, TextWeaver is a newsreader tailored to the needs of teachers and students. It uses the standard Newsserver and communication protocol (NNTP).
5	Overall User Interface
6	Design Goals The chief pedagogical goal is to enable all participants in the online class to construct their own index of the forum for their own purposes. Transferring the indexing function from the authors of messages to readers supports collaborative discourse and enhances interactive uses of the conference archive. The technical goal is to make this procedure as simple as highlighting a book for later review.
7	Specific Design Desiderata Promote active participation by the whole class. Promote interactivity. Provide time and tools needed for critical reflection Create a space for managing group activities. Let users create a personal space for storing materials for later reuse. Provide means to capture, categorize, retrieve, and revisit significant online discussions. Facilitate file sharing and exchange. Provide means for monitoring online participation and interactivity.
8	Major Features (I) Course subscription and seminar creation – Enables users to join courses and subdivide discussions into seminars. Simultaneous reading and writing – Flexible review of multiple messages, facilitates referring to multiple messages while composing replies. Quoting between reading and writing panes – Enables users to copy passages from previous messages while composing a reply and links the quotations to their original context.
9	Major Features (II) Keywording – Enables users to annotate and index interesting and important passages as they read incoming messages. Keywording facilitates reviewing the indexed materials. It supports progressive knowledge construction and the writing of weaving messages that summarize and tie together the work of the class. Filing – Saving and archiving discussion materials in a personally defined space. Filing supports reuse of materials in later versions of the same course. Offline capability – Work without an Internet connection for extended periods.
10	Major Features (III) Searching – Flexible retrieval of discussion contents under user specified criteria. Participation status report – Monitoring the volume of individual and group activity. Archive management – Enables users to transfer files and synchronize work at different locations. Mine types – Linking to different media files in messages. File attachment – Sending messages with attached files.
11	Course Subscription Courses are created by an administrator on a Newsserver. Users subscribe to courses on a server with or without password protection.
12	Seminar Creation Users create subconferences called seminars within a course to organize their activities. A default seminar Main is set up automatically.
13	Reading and Composing Review and compose messages simultaneously A reply is linked to its corresponding message
14	Quoting Use Copy Quote and Paste Quote commands to quote passages from multiple messages while composing a reply
15	Keywording Create new keywords for a course Attach keyword(s) to a passage of text.
16	Keyword review
17	Filing
18	Archive management Archive past courses Import and export courses to transfer files and synchronize work
19	Searching
20	Offline capability
21	Participant status report