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.