One day I will achieve the ultimate research question – I will look at it and know it is right. Until then…

• How do task-based groups of learners identify and use the resources of asynchronous conferences to support their learning?
• What constrains their identification and utilisation of these resources?

Look, I’ve taken ‘communities’ out of my questions for the first time! Though they’re still there, really, because I’ll argue that one of the resources of an asynchronous conference can be community.

The things I really want to get in are:

• Some affordances are illusory. Asynchronous conferences are not any time, any place, anywhere – they are constrained by real-life limitations and it can be a problem to pretend that these do not exist. Additionally, people do not make use of the permanent record to inform the debate. There are perhaps three types of affordance to look at: affordances of the technology (any time, any place, any where), affordances of the medium (history, threading, icons) and affordances of the talk (reflective, comparing perspectives etc). Analysis should show: do they recognise these affordances, do they make use of these affordances, do these affordances exist, do they act as constraints?
• Learning in these conferences is related to education, organisation and affect. The organisational and affective issues are substantial and account for the majority of seemingly off-task behaviour. I need to read more on affect and follow up any references on organisational learning. Organisational learning relates to the previous section. Analysis should reveal which forms of organisation they have to develop in order to make use of the affordances which I have identified with the help of the literature. My pilot is useful here. What helps them with this organisation and what hinders them?
• The affective issues are related to community. These aren’t communities for a number of reasons, but they utilise the resources of other communities, and build elements of a community together. Establishing trust is important. Again, this relates to seemingly off-task discussion. This relates to all the literature I have read on community, and I need more on the subject of trust. Analysis should show occasions when trust allows them to learn togther, when lack of trust prevents them from learning together, and how they establish trust.
• And I want to write about the differences between conference talk, speech and written text – especially with references to fonts, point sizes and colours. I think this relates to Vygotsky’s description of speech completing the thought. Different types of speech deal with meaning in different ways. There must be some literature on this somewhere? Analysis in this section will be much more narrowly focused on two or three passages, showing how features such as colour, quoting and typeface are used to build meaning together. I could make a start on this analysis to see if it works.