WEBSITE NEWS

Conversation about a New Discussion Tool

In keeping with one of the central questions of the Summer Institute-how the national Project can help to connect and offer support at the local level-we have been working with a Georgetown University web development team to create a new discussion tool. A central part of the vision of the VKP is that web-based technologies are one vehicle by which we can build a national conversation together around important issues in teaching and learning. With this in mind, we have felt the need for a better tool in which to conduct a rich conversation. Therefore, we would like to open a discussion about using a new tool, KeyTalk, developed by Georgetown's KeyBridge₁ web development team.

There are two features of KeyTalk which we hope will prove useful to project participants.

First is the ability to see the topics of a discussion represented in relationship to one other and visible as one navigates through the discussion board.

Second is the ability to reference documents which have been uploaded to the discussion space. When writing a discussion board message, a list of documents appears at the bottom of the message. The author selects those documents which she or he would like to provide as a reference to their comments; when users read the discussion board, the author's message provides a clickable link to the document (which opens in a new window).

We will have a username and password for each VKP participant available at the Summer Institute. We also plan to have a short questionnaire about KeyTalk and

1 KeyBridge is named for Francis Scott Key Bridge, visible from the VKP Project Management Team office at Georgetown.

July 2001

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