Direct learning while students read

Something I learned from an instructor several years ago was the power of creating interaction with students in the middle of a reading assignment. The example at the time was to have students read focused content (in this instance about "Character" as it relates to Ethics) and then prompt the student with questions in the middle of the content before they continue reading. In this example, he would embed a form into the page, and ask questions related to having good/bad character. This form would then be processed and the instructor would get an e-mail which he could respond to if necessary--for instance, if the student didn't quite get the concept correct.A new tool, Tal.ki provides the opportunity to not only embed a single question, but entire conversations between students and the instructor around any given topic. There are some limitations to the implementation, the biggest of which seems to be the inability to focus a specific topic on a page. This might be addressed, but I'm still looking. Call if you're interested in exploring this with a Distance Learning staff member.