Text chat is an engaging, real-time supplement to videoconferences, especially if students have low internet connection, or if they are dealing with a time-zone difference. Canvas Chat, Google Chat, or Slack work for the whole class, while Harmonize chat works for small groups. Chat can parallel or follow up on in-person class discussions or synchronous Zoom sessions, and give a similar sense of connection with real people on the other end.
Weekly Ed-Tech Spotlight:
Gradescope, a tool for collecting and grading assignments and tests, is still available to LSA. If you missed the pre-term Gradescope workshops, remember that there are basic workshops available every Thursday at 12pm EST! You can register for Thursday workshops here or view video of a recent workshop here.
Recent studies of online education emphasize the critical role of frequent and meaningful interactions between students and instructors for increasing the quality of the online educational experience and improving student outcomes and satisfaction (Protopsaltis & Baum, 2019). Using chat tools can encourage engagement by allowing more students a light-weight way to interact with the instructor to ask questions or clarify their understanding [1]. Chat also creates opportunity for students to interact with each other even if they have very low bandwidth available, and drop in on the conversation thread whenever possible.
An ongoing course chat can sometimes offer a better social experience than the discussion forums, and encourage students to talk amongst themselves and share resources. Most students tend to ask their classmates if they struggle with understanding a course concept or to clarify some information before reaching out to the instructor for help. If you use a whole-course chat tool, you can encourage students to ask questions very informally, and talk among themselves.
Chat is an especially good option for hybrid courses, in which some students are present in-person while some are present by videoconference. Remote students may find it easiest to interact primarily by text, in chat. Those contributions can be included by having a GSI or in-person student responsible for keeping an eye on chat and signalling when there are comments, or even by in-person students having devices open to participate in the chat themselves [2]. If you’re interested in trying this option, please reach out to the Learning and Teaching Consultants, who will be glad to help you plan how best to do it in your course!
Here are some chat tools that you can use in online courses to encourage engagement outside of or alongside videoconferences.
Canvas Chat offers a single, ongoing, class-wide chat for students and instructors. You can enable the chat feature from the course Settings. A limitation of the Canvas chat is that there is no direct messaging, and students can’t edit or delete their chat comments. Only instructors have that capability.
Google Chat, formerly known as "Google Hangouts Chat," supports both individual chat between just two people, and also group chat that could include a whole class. The interface may not be as easy to use as Canvas chat, but will probably encourage more social interaction. Google Chat does not integrate with Canvas.
Slack is a very popular chat tool, and the free version is readily available [4]. Slack provides a workspace in which you can organize topics or groups into separate channels. Instructors can, for example, create a private channel for GSIs to share information or group channels for student project groups. Slack does not integrate with Canvas.
Harmonize Chat, is another tool available in your Canvas course. An advantage of Harmonize chat is that it supports richer collaboration and conversations by allowing students and instructors to share many different types of files, not only simple text messages or downloads. Instructors can create private or group conversations and participants can delete their own messages.
Just as with in-class discussions, when utilizing the chat tools instructors need to establish ground rules and guidelines to foster mutual respect and a collaborative atmosphere. Providing guidelines such as asking students to be respectful and be open to changing their perspectives based on what they learn from others supports inclusive teaching goals, and makes for fewer instances of inappropriate behavior in chat [3]. This CRLT page provides some useful Guidelines for Classroom Interactions that may help you get started.
If you have questions about the chat tools available, or want to discuss how to best use them in your own class, please feel free to contact the LSATSLearningTeachingConsultants@umich.edu! We’ll be happy to help.
Resources
[1] 5 Ways to Connect With Online Students- the Chronicle of Higher Education
[2] Good Online and Hybrid Discussions- LSA- University of Michigan
[3] Guidelines for Classroom Interactions- CRLT- University of Michigan
[4] Text Chat- Teaching Commons- Stanford University
[5] Takeaways From My Covid-19 Remote Teaching - the Chronicle of Higher Education
Research
Protopsaltis, S., & Baum, S. (2019). Does online education live up to its promise? A look at the evidence and implications for federal policy. Center for Educational Policy Evaluation.
