I'll write you later and try to join the list. Just wanted to see how the chat was going. Being what is called a gamer, I am glad to see a medium that, in the past, has been discouraged by instructors used for instruction. In general I would agree. E-mail is starting to be used quite a bit.
Forums are way under used.
And Chat is IMO the least usefull, but good for small groups. I think the best think would be to create frameworks that the institustion can fit into their framework. All Forums, Chats, Email, systems have common elements. Implementation may be different though. I think this is a stage in the process.