Sandra, The experiences you share and lessons learned make good sense. The student interactivity within the chat room of the larger class is one of the key elements of online learning. As you indicated, definite improvements occur when the student to student interaction is based on the academic goals of the class. As facilitator you are able to accommodate the real-time (synchronous) discussion and encourage all of the students attending the forum to have some level of participation. The asynchronous forum has a very narrow window of dynamic interchange and relies on the student to retrieve the information, as you pointed out. This format of a mostly text-based, mostly asynchronous, online learning environment is the predominant forum used in today's postsecondary online classroom. The move is already underway to provide students with interactive, scenario-based, student-to-student/teacher-to-student, A/V-based (as opposed text) learning activities. The interactive prompting that takes place in the synchronous chat room allows the student to participate as a responsive party, as opposed to having the responsibility of initiator for all actions during and asynchronous text-based session. This real-time interactivity was recognized by Vygotsky, and others, as a key component to facilitate learning. Very good post and thank you so much for sharing your insights. Dr. S. David Vaillancourt