Ideas wanted - CASTLE summer book club

Today we officially topped 60 participants for CASTLE’s first annual summer book club. That’s great! – and many more people than I ever anticipated – but it also presents some challenges…

It’s clear to me that we’re going to need to have more than one discussion group. Even accounting for some attrition, if we don’t break up into smaller groups then folks are going to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of comments. I also want to make sure that people have an opportunity to have a meaningful say rather than being the 53rd person on the comment list. Based on my experiences with the online courses that I teach, right now I’m thinking at least 2 and maybe as many as 4 groups.

I’ve been playing with Lefora as a potential discussion tool. I’ve also considered blogs and/or wikis. I definitely do NOT want WebCT / Blackboard / Moodle or any other kind of course management system (although Moodle’s the least objectionable of those three). I’d like RSS subscription capability, maybe for both posts and replies. The ability to see what’s new / read / unread would be nice too (I don’t think Lefora has this). I’m not sure what else is out there.

If anyone has any ideas on either of these fronts – thoughts regarding group size and/or what good tools might be for this – I’m open to suggestions. I need to make some decisions soon. Sign-up ends June 1 and we start June 9!

Anything else I should be thinking about? I’m excited to get going!