Religion professor George Ramsey has recently developed e-mail chat groups for his classes to maintain an ongoing discussion of issues relevant to his classroom lectures. He says it is an effective way to continue the flow of ideas that may begin in class but are ended by the 50-minute bell. "It helps me in a large class to have some discussion that would be difficult simply because we do not have time in class," said Ramsey. "A good question [via e-mail] is often as good as a thoughtful comment. Sometimes students raise questions about something puzzling them that I would not have been aware of."

Currently Ramsey is using these e-mail chat groups for his Old and New Testament survey classes. He is trying a similar method for some of his elective classes, but they are not as structured yet; the elective classes mostly use e-mail for information rather than discussion. For the survey classes students get participation points for being involved in the e-mail discussions. According to Ramsey's syllabus, "Class members who submit six or more thoughtful memos (comments or questions) during the semester will earn a grade of 100 for this portion of the course grade; four or five meaningful submissions will earn an 85; two or three good submissions will earn a 70; for fewer than two submissions a student will receive a grade of 0." This grade is calculated as 1/8 of the student's final average.

Ramsey set up specific guidelines for his students after previous trials with e-mail discussion groups:

*Students are to make submissions throughout the semester, rather than multiple submissions at the end of the semester.

*Forwarding the thoughts of others will not apply as a student's own submission. Graded submissions must be the student's own ideas.

*Agreeing with another student's comments is not a sufficient submission, so students must elaborate on the ideas.

*Disagreement with someone else's ideas is fine, but no derogatory comments about other students are permitted.