The design of a synchronous virtual writing clinic

The design of an online synchronous writing clinic is described. Two novel mechanisms have been designed to provide the two fundamental capabilities for the clinic: (1) synchronous text co-editing, and (2) Internet voice delivery. Therefore, the participants are able to synchronously edit a common text file on-line with voice communication support by using the synchronous text co-editing tool. Furthermore, the designed policy-based forward error correction voice transmission mechanism delivers good voice conversation quality when handling delay, jitter, and packet loss on the Internet. The developed system not only has great value in supporting applications such as CSCW, Internet Telephony, or Multimedia Instruction on Demand (MID), but also has been applied in the area of Distance Language Learning by exploiting the integration of computer and networking capabilities with linguistic and pedagogical principles.