The class of eight people were chatting with one another on a random basis. As it happens, the more people connected during a session, the more the information is scrolled past. Therefore, one constantly would need to scroll the upper part back to a previous place where one last asked or answered a question or made a comment. After a while, a certain amount of pressure builds since one has more difficulty keeping up as more people join the on-line discussion. From my experience, I believe that the difficulty of keeping up with an InterChange discussion can be reduced by using the procedures of the MOO or chat room where certain rigorous or semi-rigorous rule sets are adopted.
Reasonable bounds reduce the randomness of subject matter.
In a MOO, where the play is the thing, characters and environment are assigned or agreed upon. With the eight participants on-line in an InterChange session, I found myself reading all the writings as I scrolled up to the last remembered position in the writing stream. If I did not do that, I would have been limited to communicating with the first person that I met on-line. In the second session, the class of eight was divided into three groups, each group having read one of three books. I had a single partner and the instructor, and, therefore, was able to keep up with the scrolling upper screen much better with less pressure.