Moodle chat

The Chat facility in Moodle

Moodle offers the text-based ‘chat’ facility.  It has no audio or video communication capabilities and is very similar to instant messaging tools, or the chat room facility which one may find on social networking (including Facebook) or similar sites.

I use the Moodle chat room for several pedagogic objectives. Here are some examples:

1. Students are asked to view a television program (for example, a televised discussion about freedom of expression) relevant to the topic. Then, at the end of the program, they are given the option to discuss the program in the chat room and address questions/comments to other students and me. This is a useful and engaging process to get other opinions and feedback on the TV program while it is still fresh in everyone’s minds.

2. During projects, placements and/or anytime during the course I use the facility to hold open chats to answer/discuss students’ questions, and solve problems. These sessions are also very important evaluative activities.

3. Students are urged to use the chat facility while working on group projects or assignments.

4. I offer to meet students through this facility during my ‘virtual’ office hours. Admittedly, students prefer Skype or Google Hangouts.

Using an expert guest speaker

It is very difficult to give access to guest spearkers to the University of Malta Moodle platform because all participants must be registered with the university of Malta as either lecturers or students. Guest speakers must receive a special concession as ‘guests’ to Moodle. However, this, to my knowledge, is a lengthy bureaucratic process, which I prefer to bypass by using non-Moodle messaging systems.

Managing a synchronous chat

Synchronous chats may be very difficult to manage. A synchronous chat with a large group of students is hard to handle. It might be wise to break that group into smaller ones that allow for meaningful discourse (about 4 to 6). It is important to establish those groups ahead of time to eliminate confusion and disruption to the instructional flow. As in every large group situation the dominant personalities tend to monopolize the conversation. So that all members feel as though they are part of the group ask rapport building questions, poll learners and praise for participation.

 Synchronous chats have other drawbacks. These include:

1. Talk is faster than type - In a synchronous chat environment a user is expected to read, process, and respond in type, virtually simultaneously. Due to this a slow typist can be left behind in chats.
2. Tone does not carry over text - A participant in a text chat needs to be careful of what he/she is typing as intended tone does not carry across texts. Therefore sarcasm, and other jokes, may not come across as jokes and a user may inadvertently offend someone else in the chat room.
3. Responses can be limited - If a teacher is looking for in depth and detailed responses, synchronous chats may not be the way to go. In order to keep up wit the speed of the chat, user responses tend to be short and concise.
4. May appear fragmented or confusing - If the teacher did not participate in the synchronous chat and requests to read the log he/she might be confused about what occurred. Since synchronous chats tend to flit about from topic to topic with no real sequence an outside reader may lose the trend of the conversation, (from Tips for Synchronous Chat)

Other considerations that should be made, particularly if the chat is not a one-to-one supervisory meeting, include:

1. Use the real-time connection to establish social presence.
2. Establish beginning and ending times for discussion.
3. Consider the time zones of international participants in assigning groups.
4. Create a learner-controlled environment – empower learners to take responsibility for active discussion.
5. Plan for higher levels of thinking in open discussion question.
6. Assess student participation as a required part of their grade.
7. Present rules of netiquette to assure quality discussion.
8. Keep sentences short and on the topic.
9. Refer to the person by name when responding to his/her specific questions and comments.
10. Ask students to suspend discussion if it moves too fast to respond to questions or comments.
11. Provide clear instructions for sharing a facilitator role when participants conduct discussion without an instructor as facilitator.
12. Develop a participation assessment tool or grading rubric prior to the discussion. Share the tool with the participants before the discussion begins. (from Successful Synchronous and Asynchronous Discussions)

Conclusion

Despite all these considerations, the synchronous chat makes the learning experience closer to a face-to-face encounter. This can surely help in creating a stronger social dimension to the learning effort.

Interesting links

My Pearltrees collection of articles and blogs about synchronous discussion.

Synchronous discussion in online courses through free applications

Most pedagogical frameworks and models, including Garrison, Anderson and Archer’s (2000) Community of Inquiry framework and Gilly Salmon’s (2003, 2005) ‘5-stage model’ for online teaching and learning, agree that the instructor needs to create, develop and maintain ‘social presence’ in the learning effort. Indeed, even Hranstinki (2008) argues that,

social support is desirable as a way to foster collaborative work and learning; it provides an environment where communication is encouraged; e.g., anecdotes and personal experiences encourage trust, which foster a receptive and creative learning environment.

Online learning efforts often rely mainly on the text-based asynchronous forums through LMS systems, blogs and wikis.  Text-based communication has, however, an important handicap. As I argued in a previous assignment, online text-based communication provides no visual cues other than words or images and lacks the ‘sense of immediacy’ of ‘real-time, verbal, face-to-face mode of communication’ and therefore ‘presents a special challenge for establishing social presence’ (Garrison, 2011: 23).  The literature reviewed for this task concurs that this drawback can be reduced through frequent synchronous meetings.  Furthermore, Garrett (2011: 160) also notes that the synchronous meeting is, pedagogically, more versatile and closer to the face-to-face experience. He notes that 

While many of the activities such as lecture, discussion, group work, examinations, student presentations, multimedia presentations, guest speakers, web-based searches/demos/discussion, and demonstrations can be attempted in an asynchronous environment, most are more easily and effectively accomplished in a synchronous environment that more closely approximates the traditional classroom.

Caladine et al (2010) also note that, through audio and video synchronous conferencing, there 

is now scope for the empowerment of distance learners and an opportunity to offer a much wider choice of strategies intended to enhance and support learning … Indications from the research literature are exciting.

This research literature also reports that communicating in real-time at a distance has never been easier. This is confirmed by many practitioners, such as Villano (2008), who state that

mainstream technology has advanced and the cost of web conferencing has dropped … What's more, the innovations are infinite, and have uses even beyond eLearning or blended learning in real time.

There are many free and/or licensed platforms that can be used. Moreover, many applications are appearing on the Android and App Store market that make mobile conferencing through tablets, including iPads, and smartphones a convenient reality. These apps knock down the once insurmountable barriers for video conferencing use in education—barriers of student access, and technology that was cumbersome and expensive (see Garrett, 2011).

For example, with the free social app ‘ooVoo’ a teacher can hold a free group video chat with up to 12 students on 3G, 4G, LTE and/or Wifi.  More popular apps, which are available across all computer devices and operating systems include Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts. Unfortunately, the very versatile and robust Adobe Connect is no longer free. However, the newly launched appear.in (available at https://appear.in) seems to be a promising alternative (although still non-functional in Safari and can accept only 8 people [for free] in any virtual room).  

The literature also indicates that the multiplayer virtual reality game Second Life can also used for real-time group conferencing, and learning. Though, students have to communicate through their avatars (see Kapp, 2007) rather than using their real faces. The game has been used and studied for many years now and has been adopted for many learning contexts, from K-12 to tertiary education. Its use in the training of nurses (see Blackburn, 2008) and the teaching of languages has been an outstanding success.

The reviewed literature however also indicates that despite the potential and successes of synchronous conferencing a significant barrier still exists, that of pedagogy. Caladine et al (2010), in fact, insist that

from a practitioners point-of-view, the challenge will come from the need to be flexible, adaptive and innovative. In other words, the need is to rapidly develop new understandings of pedagogies to best utilize the person-to-person interactivity of emerging technologies.  

Moreover, there is agreement in the literature, that, for synchronous discussions to be effective and efficient, the pedagogical mindsets of both the educator and learners need to move away from the traditional ‘schooling’ model (where the transmission and passive acquisition of knowledge is the predominant educational objective). The educators and students must a progressive 21^st educational paradigm where learning is mainly (but not exclusively) achieved through the collaborative construction of knowledge. Furthermore, as with any educational technology tool, the purpose for using synchronous discussion has to make sense. It has to fit in with the curriculum in a pedagogically sound way that supports learning and achievement of the course objectives. Yet, as Andrews and Klease (2002) note,

in many cases the use (of video conferencing) has not been informed by rigorous research leading to sound pedagogical practices. Video conferencing has frequently copied typical lecture style format of didactic lecture style delivery rather than exploring approaches.

These authors also report that, during synchronous sessions, students ‘find the talking head presentation to be undesirable’ (Andreas and Klease, 2002). They therefore argue that synchronous tools should not be used as a one-way medium, a format where the instructor can deliver information in real-time, but instead be viewed as a vehicle that allows for the exchange of information, for accommodating three or four-way (or more) conversations that build learning, ideas and learners’ motivation.

A final note: the synchronous communication medium should be reserved only for exchanges that support a course objective or other learning-related function (for example, for student encounters in a virtual office) that can’t be accomplished through asynchronous methods. 

REFERENCES

Go to the bibliography page for the full list of references.

Blogging

A very good example of an educational blog is thelearningprofessor of Professor John Field (University of Stirling). It is available at https://thelearningprofessor.wordpress.com. 

This is one of three blogs that I will be using in a course I am currently developing about adult education in the online dimension. The other blogs are The Learning Age by Paul Stanistreet, available at https://thelearningage.wordpress.com and Where the Blog Has No Name by E Wayne Ross, available at http://blogs.ubc.ca/ross/. The students will also be asked to follow John Field's tweets and new postings on his academia.edu page.

Like most blogs thelearningprofessor is made up of entries or posts that appear in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry appearing first. After each post come the comments which often develop into discussions triggered by Field's ideas. Like other blogs it also shares features such as the search facility, a list of links to 'recent posts' and 'archives', 'categories', 'META' and 'blogroll' widgets on the narrower right-hand column. It also has plugins  that automatically share a new post details to all the most popular social networking tools, including Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Reddit and Facebook, a plugin to share the post by email, a Wordpress 'like' button, and another to convert the post into an easy-to-print document. The sidebar (right column) offers two ways to follow the blog: an RSS feed and email.

I integrated this blog into the online course mainly becasue John Field is a prolific writer in the fileds of adult education and lifelong learning, as his bio attests. The posts in his blog provide short, straight-to-the point and personal essays which, however, convey the same feelings and ideas present in his more profound and longer publications. Therefore, they are perfect introductions to John Field for students who are new to the writer, and his research interests. The posts are also easy to read and highly accessible to students.

The blog with its clean layout, minimalist design and, the author's use of perfect grammar, is also a model of good design for an educational blog. In my course it will be used for three teaching needs: (i) to provide short essays intended to stimulate asynchronous discussions, (ii) as an example of a blog to initiate a discussion on adult informal education, and (iii) as an example of good practice for a student project involving the development of a personal blog.