Long live the online chat!
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Response piece to:
The online meeting chat is dead: long live the online meeting chat!
I realize this is an opinion piece but, I so agree with this! I love chat functions and miss them, unlike in this piece that compares online chat to face-to-face classrooms, but in virtual reality platforms that do NOT have a group chat function (#AltspaceVR, I'm looking directly at you).
Having taught online for 14 years full time, I used to teach new faculty how to stir up the chat and get it going for online classes:
- I encourage the "Pre-Chat Chat", that is, make ONLY NON-academic chat in the chat pod before class starts.
- Invite the learners to think of the chat pod as "theirs" and only interject in writing in the chat pod during lecture with links, spellings, things that must be seen in text to be understood (aka vocabulary)
- Questions where no one's answer is wrong (I love these for "what's your favorite..." or "what most...."---- and quasi-experts in assessment say that higher level thinking can't happen online, p-ha! 😆 It so can!! )
- Saying a learner's name out loud with their comment - that works GREAT for getting more and more chat, stirring the pot, aka anti crickets). People just LOVE hearing their own name said out loud. Bonus points, by NOT reading a comment out loud you can tamp down a nasty dissenter.