Work in progress - Enhancing on-line interaction with graphical tools

A limitation in many on-line interaction systems (discussion boards, wikis, chat rooms, etc.) is the lack of graphical tools. When using these types of systems to provide asynchronous help for engineering classes, the lack of integrated graphical tools ignores the need to communicate with sketches and equations. Due to the nature of the material and the limitations of current technologies, students tend to work in a mixed-mode environment. That is, they will work out their solutions to problems on paper, and then they have to duplicate or describe their work in a text only mode when they go on-line for assistance. The requirements, design, and implementation of a prototype system for allowing students to seamlessly integrate images, sketches, and equations along with text in on-line discussion board environment is described.