I would like to comment on the first use case above Michael (An introductory literature class).
As group projects and problem based learning are gaining popularity... collaboration space, clear group permissions, and summaries of an individual's contributions to the group become even more important.
If I am in a class with you I want to be able to list all contributions you have made to the class so I can get a feel for who I am talking with (in other words, being able to list class contributions of an individual should not be limited to the professor).
We must not forget that students need to be protected. Should contributions be limited to the audience it would reach in a traditional learning situation (I might not want my professor in Medical Ethics hearing what I said in my Philosophy course last year)? Should the student decide (I might need to remove the evidence... after posting something really stupid)? The best solution might be to link the "about me" view permissions with the context of the contribution (if bboard is only viewable by users in course X... all users registered in course X should be able to see a listing of my contributions in that course on my "about me" page). I get the feeling it is just boils down to where we put the switches (the infrastructure seems to be in place).
Before calling it a night, I would like to add a slightly modified use case: Lets say we are both in the Introduction to Literature class. With 90 people in the course the professor cut the total number of blogs to 30. Now we have to work in groups of three and consolidate our opinions. We are required to publish our group's opinion (each of us signed-off each contribution). The post is then sent to one of the three course assistants. Each assistant reviews the various contributions approving and rejecting them... approved contributions get sent to the professor and those that are rejected back to the groups (with comments included). The professor then publishes the gems for the whole class, which are then used in the general class discussion.
