Tips and Tricks for using the Chat Room tool in WebCT

These tips and tricks are from Ken Masters (WebCT), Donna Hennig (WebCT), and Bob Boufford (WebCT)-- circa August, 2004

From Ken Masters:

Here some things to bear in mind:

Logging in problems:

• Get everyone to try a log in days before, from the same machine that they will use in the real session. This will ensure that their machines, browsers, plug-ins, connection, etc. are all ok.
  • Note that most will wait until the day before, before trying and then will need help immediately. You need to have someone with tech savvy who has seen most of the problems before - you want to respond, not to waste time diagnosing.

Make the first real session "exploratory":

• Don't aim to get through too much. Tell that to your participants up front, or they will be disappointed at how little they got through in an hour. It's their first time, remember. (see also points below)

First time time-waste:

• Chat is a lot of fun when people first try it. That means that they will want to experiment and fool around. Don't expect them to settle into in the first few seconds - it could take up to 10 minutes before you settle the group. Let them have a bit of fun and get it out of their systems.

Because people talk over themselves, you run the risk of people seeming to respond inappropriately:

• Here's a hypothetical example:
  • [Peter] What is your opinion of what the CEO of Acme industries has done about their budget?
  • [John] What do you think of the AIDS situation in Zimbabwe?
  • [Mary] I think it's great, and will solve all their problems.
• A situation like this arises where Peter types a question, Mary is typing her answer, but, before she can respond, John has typed another question and presses "Enter" a split second before Mary does.To get around this, we tell our students to use the name of the person to whom they are responding, at the beginning of the sentence:
  • [Peter] What is your opinion of what the CEO of Acme industries has done about their budget?
  • [John] What do you think of the AIDS situation in Zimbabwe?
  • [Mary] Peter, I think it's great, and will solve all their problems.

Expect a delay between a question an answer

• Most people don't touch type, and even those who do, still need a bit of time.

If you have love for the English language:

• put on a thick skin and be prepared 2 c tht ppl use shrt frms of wrds cos u cant w8. (It usually won't be that bad, but certainly speling anfd grammer go out the window. Sometime it results is errors, often hilarious, ususally followed by a corection (which itself might be incorct :-)

Make sure that your support people are available by phone (cell, if they're using their land-lines for connection):

• Yup, I know it sort of reduces the effect, but it's necessary.

If you have an opening introduction that you'd like to give, or if you're going to do it second time:

• Type up some of the stuff first in Word, check spelling, grammar, and then copy-and-paste in to the chat room.
• Keep the chunks (paragraphs) small, and post one paragraph at a time, because they scroll up the screen, and your people need time to read.

Not sure if this is still valid in these later versions, but there was a bug in the earlier version:

• If you posted a private message, and it ran over 255 words, then only the first 255 were private, and the rest was public. Mmm, very interesting.

Be careful of what you say in private - it's all logged.

Tell your people upfront that it is all being logged, and will be distributed. For two reasons:

• Courtesy (and in some countries, law)
• The logs act as minutes and notes. You can later retrieve the log file, and post it up (raw or edited, depending on your situation), so people don't have to take frantic notes during the session, and also that they have an accurate recording of what was said (none of this "I was quoted out of context" stuff :-).

Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I think other issues depend on the situation, number of participants, etc.

From Donna Hennig

Thanks for the great tips for a successful chat session. I would add two others:

• Group Size
  • The Chat session can get quite confusing if you have more than 5 or 6 people. Either keep the group small or set up some "rules" in advance. For example, you could make it clear that the instructor/moderator will direct questions at specific individuals to answer rather than just a free-for-all.
• Punctuality
  • Because the Chat session is real time (synchronous), anyone who joins late will not see the text of the conversation that went on before they entered the Chat room. If people come in late, you will have to repeat what was said earlier if you want them to see it.

From Bob Boufford

Some additional tips...

Set up some "ground rules" ahead of time.

Establish "codes" for asking questions, "passing the mic" and "I'm still talking".

• Common ones include:
  • ? - handraise for I have a question
  • ! - handraise for I'll answer that
  • ... - I still have the floor
  • >> - I'm done talking
• The above codes can be used in addition to the other usual emoticons.

On the issue that Donna brings up of latecomers or those who lose connections needing to "catch-up", there is a way to display the current chat log in an almost "real time" fashion. With CE, you can create a Single Page link that points to a chat room log in the "chat" folder in Manage Files and is set to open in a new window. Any time the window is refreshed, it shows the latest log entries.

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