The educational potential of asynchronous, computer-mediated conferencing is well documented. Opportunities for increased group interaction, more equitable communication patterns, higher degrees of reflection, and time-and-place-independent discussions are some of the benefits cited by researchers. This article focuses on one of the apparent limitations of the medium: the lack of support for convergent processes. Threaded online environments support electronic conversations that expand and branch, but provide few facilities for drawing together discourse in meaningful ways. The implications of this restriction are explored in two studies. The first study analyzes the degree to which students and instructors write convergent notes (e.g., notes that synthesize or summarize ideas) in three graduate-level computer conferencing courses. The second study explores student perceptions relating to their own synthesizing and summarizing practices. The results suggest that online participants rarely engage in convergent processes in spite of widespread agreement that such efforts confer educational benefits. Possible explanations for this phenomenon are discussed.

Recent advances in computer and telecommunications technologies have raised new possibilities for distance education. Increasingly, the Internet is the medium of choice for delivering course materials and supporting interaction between teachers and learners. One of the more common distance education technologies is asynchronous computer-mediated conferencing (CMC). In a typical CMC course, individuals dial-in to a central database from anywhere in the world and view the writings of their teacher and classmates. Responses to these writings can then be crafted and stored to the course database for others to read. In this fashion, whole-class discussions can take place without having to coordinate a common meeting time or meeting place. Instead, people can participate from home and organize class time around their individual schedules (Kaye, 1989; Harasim, 1987, 1989).

Studies of CMC as an alternative to traditional instruction suggest that online environments affect more than just the "where" and the "when" of course-taking. They also change the nature of classroom discourse. In a regular classroom, discussion is sequential and transient; only one person (generally) speaks at a time and the content of the conversation is not preserved. CMC, on the other hand, allows everyone to "talk" (write) at once because there is no need for turn taking (Mason & Kaye, 1990). This allows shy, and less vocal students to participate without risk of interruption (Davie, 1988), and reduces the possibility of a dynamic individual dominating the conversation (Eastmond, 1994; Tuckey, 1993). Furthermore, since all discourse is preserved electronically, participants can easily revisit old ideas and reflect longer on new ideas before committing them to public scrutiny (Levinson, 1990; Mason & Kaye, 1990). Thus, asynchronous CMC has the potential to be a highly social, egalitarian, and deliberativ e medium (Harasim, 1989). It would be a mistake to interpret this form of distance education as simply conventional instruction delivered remotely. CMC provides affordances for a fundamentally different form of learning, one that engages students as active, reflective participants in an electronically-linked community.

Despite the promising nature of CMC-based instruction, a number of problems are often associated with online courses. Frequently...