Uses of Chat & IM

Chat and IM can be used to support various teaching and learning needs in online and blended courses. One or more of the following uses may be appropriate for your teaching style, course content, or learner needs.

If you choose to use a chat or IM tool, it would be a good idea to provide a tutorial for your students. Several tutorials are listed in the resources section and you can use any of them. However, please keep in mind that, as software gets upgraded, tutorials may need to be updated to provide accurate and useful help.

Teaching Uses

Although most often discussed in relation to online learners, you may also feel isolated and disconnected in online courses. Additionally, many of you feel a strong need to teach your students more directly than can be accomplished in a discussion forum. The synchronous nature of chat and IM can address both of these concerns in a number of ways.

Office Hours

Challenge: Online students often are not able to visit you during your office hours. This increases online students' sense of isolation and eliminates an important type of support that on-campus students have.

Solution 1: Post your office hours and your preferred chat room or IM tool and ID in your syllabus. Then, during your regularly scheduled office hours, get online. You can be working on other things at or near your computer and will be alerted when a student attempts to contact you.

Solution 2: If you prefer to schedule office visits with your students because you like to touch base with all of them at least once during the semester, post your contact info in your syllabus and post a signup sheet for students. Then, be available online at those scheduled times. Again, you can be working on other things near or at your computer while you are waiting.

Challenge: Many of you like to present lectures or invite guest speakers to talk in your on-campus courses. While transcripts of lectures or talks could be posted online, the missing interactions between you and your students or your guest speaker and your stuents can have a negative impact on teaching and learning.

Solution: In your syllabus/schedule, post the dates, times, and locations (chat room, IM service) of your synchonous lecture events. See example schedule for one way to accomplish this.

Question and Answer Sessions

Challenge: In on-campus courses, students have many opportunities to get clarification on assignment directions or content during class while online students do not. This generally means too many emails from students asking for clarification - often forcing you to answer the same questions over and over again. Additionally, your experience in your on-campus courses probably gives you an idea of which concepts are more difficult for students to grasp and will need the added support of a synchronous chat or IM session for clarification.

Solution: In your syllabus or schedule, post a schedule Q&A chats or IM sessions (with dates, times, and locations - see example schedule for details). If you are holding regularly-scheduled online office hours, this may not be necessary. However, if you find yourself answering the same questions from a number of students, you may want to schedule a specific time just for this.

Learning Uses

In online courses, learners often express feelings of isolation. Additionally, if group projects are required, they experience frustration with asynchronous forms of communication (discussion forums, email, etc.) when attempting to organize their efforts. Synchronous tools such as chat and IM help overcome both of these challenges to effective online learning and also provide other learning opportunities that students may not otherwise have access to.

  • Social Support / Networking
  • Discussions / Information Sharing
  • Group Project Planning

The easiest way to support your students' needs for any of the above is to suggest to them that they use chat or IM and then provide them with tutorials to help them use the tools effectively. Of course, some students may need more help in the area of social support - it is difficult for some to initiate chats or IMs with other students who, for the most part, are strangers to them. In that case, a few scheduled whole class chats at the beginning of the semester will help to break the ice.

Personal and Professional Uses

  • Staying in touch with family and friends
  • Professional Networking

Often, it is easier to get into the habbit of using a new technology if you first practice in a low-risk environment. Communicating with family and friends using chat or IM can be quite a helpful (as well as rewarding, fun, and free!) exercise in preparing you to use the tools more confidently and effectively with your students.