The "rotisserie" was the first tool in the tool box. The rotisserie is web-based software that allows a professor to pose a question to her students which each answers, and then randomly routs each student’s answer to another student for reactions.

Imagine this. You are a professor of constitutional law planning a lecture on the First Amendment and hate speech. Interested in broadening the discussion, you log on to and find that a professor you know and respect who is teaching at a law school in France has entered a question about the merits of banning pro-Nazi speech. She is open to collaboration with your class, so you elect to join in her question and rotisserie and arrange your class so that the rotisserie will take place on the day following your class discussion. After your lecture grounded in the U.S. Constitution, your students have the opportunity to discuss the topic with students who bring a significantly different perspective and context.

Imagine this. You are a student in a class on Internet law in which you are studying data privacy and privacy on the Internet. Christoper Lydon, host of the radio show “The Connection”, is doing a show on the same topic. He has invited his listeners to visit the radio show website to write in their greatest questions and concerns about their own privacy on the Internet. After class you check your email and find that there is a rotisserie question for you to answer. However, rather than a regular question posed by your teacher, you receive one of the questions from Christopher Lydon’s concerned audience. Your response will go directly to this listener who can benefit from your understanding and explanation of the topic and assessment of his/her question.

The promise for use of the rotisserie described above is more than just imaginary: we have been using the beta version of the rotisserie for the past two years in classes taught at Harvard Law School or through the Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s online lecture and discussion series. Running on code programmed by two law students, the rotisserie has been great success and a promising first step into the exploration of its pedagogical potential. The rotisserie is creative and elegant rather than jazzy or complex. It uses the capabilities of technology to accomplish a type of interaction between students that is not practically feasible in most classes now. The creativity of a few professors thinking about a new type of communication within a classroom, and a few weeks work by some students produced a beta version of this rotisserie software.

The types of interactivity that can facilitate can be hard to imagine because there are so many possible axes of communication. The following descriptions and graphics are intended to help clarify the vision.

Each of the rectangles represents a different course in the environment. The squares within the courses represent the tools that are being used for each course: a syllabus created with the syllabus tool, the rotisserie to use for specific assignments, possibly classroom tools to be used during class, and others. No class need use all of the tools. Note that courses may be connected to each other. The diagrams below demonstrate in more detail the ways in which courses can interact with each other.

Each square represents a different course within the environment on a particular date. Course 3 is doing its own thing, with a syllabus created solely by its professor and a related rotisserie question in which only Course 3 students are participating. The professor of Course 2, perhaps, is a particular expert in the topic she is teaching on this date and has crafted and chosed to share an outstanding syllabus unit. The professors teaching Course 1 and Course 4 have both opted to use her syllabus unit for this date. The professor of course 4 is using the syllabus but has created a different rotisserie question for his students that relates more closely to the material his class has been studying. The professor in Course 1 has added some additional material to his class's syllabus. He has also created a rotisserie question that he and the professor of Course 2 have decided to do jointly, thus the students of their two classes will participate in the rotisserie together.

Each bar represents the syllabus constructed for a course by the professor. The overlapping portions are where a professor has chosen to share a syllabus unit of another professor either completely or in part. Note that overlaps may occur at the same point in the chronology of the course or at different times. The benefit of choosing to overlap at the same time is the added ability to arrange for classes to participate in a joint rotisserie or joint use of another tool.

Each square represents a single rotisserie question created by a professor for a particular course. The circles within the questions represent particular uses of the question by different classes. The letters within the circles represent particular courses using the particular instance of the question. The same question may be used by two different classes at different times, may be used jointly by several classes at the same time, or may be used separately by different classes at the same time.