Ideas on asynchronous pull technologies in course design

Eric Tremblay in his e-Learning Acupuncture blog posted a list of very interesting and useful ideas of asynchronous learning activities which are basically ACOLLA (asynchronous collaborative learning activities). Instead of repeating all his wonderful ideas here, please go and visit his page.

I totally agree with him that

So the permutations and combinations of asynchronous learning activities and resource presentations are almost endless. Some work better than others. Simple designs work best and up-front grading rubrics guide the DE students in a clear fashion.

[my emphasis]

Students giving feedback to each other, guided by check lists and criteria (as rubrics perhaps), can serve two purposes:
1. another opportunity for students to reflect on the subject matter (in an objective role of providing positive and constructive ideas),
2. provide a pointer for the teachers to grade the work. (Well, you may choose to aggregate the grades provided by the students to be the final grade of the work, why not?)

The responsibility of maintaining the dialogue is now shifted into the activities themselves. You may also reduce your continuous solicitation of contributions to the forum.

Isn't this a wonderful idea? Brilliant!