“The only unpleasant aspect of the mailing list was some initial inappropriate messages. This is a well-known problem with electronic forums, where delayed feedback and novelty lead participants to behave in ways they would not contemplate in a face to face meeting. A message from the course leader asking students to treat the list as an area for professional debate was enough to prevent the problem from recurring. It may be profitable to provide students new to such forums with guidance on appropriate behaviour.”

“Learning by cooperative publishing on the World Wide Web.” Tony Downing and Ian Brown. Active Learning 7 (December 1997). The entire article is available for download in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format at http://www.cti.ac.uk/publ/actlea/al7pdf/downing.pdf.