For this reason, in April of this year Daniel added to his class's site on Gilman's story a message forum that allows anyone with a web connection to contribute their thoughts to an ongoing on-line discussion. Unfortunately, during the remainder of the Spring semester, postings to the website by national and international participants was limited. When we first posted our sites to the web, the majority of people who visited them were either or own students or people from our institution who knew about the site. My initial reaction was one of disappointment.

However, the interactions that have taken place on "The Yellow Wall-Paper" site's message forum since the semester ended seem to offer significant promise. It took several months before the amount of traffic at the site reached the high level that we hoped for, but once it did the possibilities for using it for discussion-based literary instruction re-emerged. The number of visits to the site, also known as "hits," increased from a handful a week in April 1995 to 2,529 during the first week of December 1995. The activity in the message forum also increased correspondingly. A single message in May was followed by seven in July and August and then by an average of seven per month in September, October, and November. Participants in the forum have included students and scholars from locations as wide-ranging as George Washington University, Wittenburg University, West Virginia University, and Washington State University.

Although the dialog was slow to begin we feel that with advanced coordination message forums and other web discourse mechanisms comprise a new set of classroom tools that offer significant promise. Feel free to add your thoughts about this essay or Giman's short story to our Yellow Wall-Paper message forum.

Linear link: Conclusion