"השמיעיני את קולך" – הקול האישי בקורס למידה מרחוק בספרות

This paper presents research conducted in the wake of writing and running an academic distance learning literature course focusing on the poetry of leading female poets in modern Hebrew literature. In order to increase the learners' willingness to tackle the poetic text, which demands attention and in-depth study – attributes with which the contemporary reader is not automatically endowed – the course was held in an online environment in which, I assumed, conditions for discourse on poetry would be created by implementing diverse learning methods. This type of learning, which is clearly social in character, occurs simultaneously on two levels: (1) the personal level (positioning the reader in relation to the literary text), and (2) the level of the interpersonal voice (positioning the learner in relation to the interpretative community).The research focuses on a description of the learning process as a discourse among learners following the course assignments I wrote. The assignments were also devised by mobilizing most of the resources afforded by an online environment. The research does not pretend to lay down laws about such a complex methodological topic as teaching and studying poetry, but rather it indicates the hidden potential of virtual media that are expanding into learning processes in front of our very eyes. In the dispute regarding the integration of virtual media into teaching and learning processes, I am firmly on the supporting side.