A long, long, long time ago - so long, I think it's fallen off my blog - I remember reviewing a learning platform that was based around asynchronous discussions, but where group members would leave short voicemail messages, that would - over time - build on the audio postings of others. I seem to remember this site was well organised visually, so you could easily follow the flow of the conversation with all its twists and turns.
Today I stumbled upon something along the same lines, although the conversations are organised in a more linear fashion.
Voxopop is also a discussion forum that uses audio instead of written contributions. Members become part of TalkGroups which discuss topics of interest. These conversations can be public or - fortunately, for potential corporate users - kept private. Members can keep track of the conversations in which they are interested by setting up so-called watch lists and can also subscribe using an RSS feed. You can even set things up so that iTunes automatically delivers the latest audio postings to your MP3 player. You record directly into the website, so you'll need access to a microphone.
You can search for interesting public TalkGroups and discussions and then sign up to start your own TalkGroup, or to join an existing group.
Not surprisingly, this site is popular for foreign language training and I could easily see an international company building groups where learners were coached by native speakers in the target country. Another discussion that gave me ideas for further uses was for business interviewing skills.
These examples are clearly well suited to a platform that focuses on the voice, but there's no reason why the discussions couldn't be more "tutorial group" style, where it's what you say in relation to another topic that counts. This would therefore be a good tool for continuing those all important conversations after a training event, especially where attendees are spread across different time zones, where "real time" discussions might prove problematic. Participants could even use the system to share their pre-training objectives before meeting face-to-face or virtually for a group training session.
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