JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING 19, 249-265 (2003) 249 The Design of a Synchronous Virtual Writing Clinic * CHIN-HWA KUO, DAVID WIBLE ** , MENG-CHANG CHEN + , LI-CHUN SUNG AND CHIA-LIN CHIO Computers and Networking (CAN) Laboratory Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering Tamkang University Tamshui, 251 Taiwan ** Research in English Acquisition and Pedagogy (REAP) Group Department of English Tamkang University Tamshui, 251 Taiwan + Advanced Internet Protocols and Services Group Institute of Information Science Academia Sinica Nankang, Taipei, 115 Taiwan The design of an online synchronous writing clinic is described. Two novel mechanisms have been designed to provide the two fundamental capabilities for the clinic: (1) synchronous text co-editing, and (2) Internet voice delivery. Therefore, the participants are able to synchronously edit a common text file on-line with voice com- munication support by using the synchronous text co-editing tool. Furthermore, the de- signed policy-based forward error correction voice transmission mechanism delivers good voice conversation quality when handling delay, jitter, and packet loss on the Internet. The developed system not only has great value in supporting applications such as CSCW, Internet Telephony, or Multimedia Instruction on Demand (MID), but also has been applied in the area of Distance Language Learning by exploiting the integration of computer and networking capabilities with linguistic and pedagogical principles. Keywords: computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), voice transmission, co-editing, distance learning, computer assisted language learning (CALL) 1. INTRODUCTION With the rise of the World Wide Web, there has been a corresponding resurgence in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Currently, there are numerous com- mercially available packages ranging in format from CD-ROMs to interactive systems over the Internet. While CD-ROMs are limited in terms of the resources that can be included and in the level of interactivity and responsiveness to individual users, interac- tive systems have the advantage of transcending these limitations. Among the distance learning systems on the Internet, a fundamental distinction can be drawn between two basic modes of interaction that are available: asynchronous and Received April 19, 2000; revised August 29 & December 20, 2000 & January 8, 2001; accepted May 15, 2002. Communicated by Chuen-Tsai Sun. * The present work is partly supported by National Science Council Taiwan ROC under NSC 88-2213-E-032-002.