This is the third post on metaStudio featuring the special features of gnowsys-studio.
This post features a space for creating an online threaded discussion forum. There are a number of threaded discussion forums, and this one adds to that family of web apps that facilitate communication among a group of people. Here is a link to one of the threads Leviathan and the air pump, where we use this feature for running a small graduate course.
The loom of gnowsys-studio is designed to do the following things:
- Create a thread on a broad topic
- Under each thread create twists. A twist is a discussion trigger, it can be question, it can be a sub-topic of the thread. It can be anything about which you want to seek responses from the community. If you use it to understand a topic, clear doubt, ask for help or offer help etc.
- Under each twist, members can submit replies.
- Each respondent can choose a color of their choice for the text as well as the background. This will help to recognize the person’s messages easily in a long discussion thread.
- The threads and twists can be classified using tags. Users can also rate them. The responses can be rates as well. The average score will be computed based on the ratings.
Thread’s description can be edited collaboratively. twist can be edited, but messages once posted cannot be edited. You can delete a message though. Whereever you can edit, the editor we provide is the same. See the post on orgmode editor.
We have been using loom for discussions for undergraduate and graduate classes. The picture below gives you a glimpse of how a thread constructed in the loom looks like:
While sending the responses you can add a picture, use hyperlinks, write mathematical equations, embed a video, SVG images, animation etc. Therefore, it can used for a very rich technical dialogue in a community as well.
We will be extending the loom architecture for comprehensive continuous assessment
