Communication Tools
E-portfolio Assignment #3: Communication Tools
I chose the Asynchronous Discussion Forum & the Chat Room features
Why did you chose them?
- I chose the discussion form as I see this as the main course communication tool. I appreciate the flexible nature of the asynchronous environment. Students (or the teacher) can go back at any time and read through the postings, adding additional comments where appropriate. In our school students are on a somewhat flexible schedule, so they are rarely at the same point. In this case the asynchronous communication is vital.
- I chose the chat room to provide a method for students to talk in real time if they so choose. Moodle has a feature (a block) that allows you to see if other participants are online, so if two students are online at the same time, they could use the chat room. The chat room also archives discussions (as long as you have 2 or more participants), so students can use these transcripts, and teachers can use this archiving feature as a means of supervision (if a complaint comes up).
What does this tool bring to the educational experience?
- The Discussion forum brings a chance for students to interact at his/her own pace. The asynchronous nature allows students to reflect on their comments before posting.
- The Chat Room allows students to talk in real time, so if they have a question they can talk about it right then.
What are its limitations?
Limitations of the Discussion board include:
- A possibly overwhelming number of postings to read
- If the class enrollment is low (sometime we only have 5 students in a course), and students are interacting at their own pace, then the first student may have to wait for weeks for the next students to reach the discussion area.
Limitation of the Chat Room
- All chatting participants must be available at the same time
- It is more difficult to type your thoughts – takes much longer than speaking, so the pause time between comments may seem unusual.
- If one student is a slow typist, they may be left out of the conversation
Does it work? If it is in your LMS site we will test it; if not, it should be linked there and you need to describe how you tested it
- Yes, both the Discussion forum and the Chat room are in my Moodle site, in topic 2, titled, “Communication Tools”. I have tested each one (but my chat conversation was not archived as you need 2 or more participants before the conversation will be archived).
The Rationale and Setting sections are coming soon….. and here they are……
Step 2: Develop an activity
Discussion Forum
I would use discussion forums throughout the course as our main communication tool. I would start with a discussion forum as one of the first activities for students to post an introduction of themselves. Hopefully this will help to build our online community and, if students share information about themselves, perhaps it will allow them to become more comfortable with each other (they can see that the other participants are also students in similar circumstances), and this comfort may help facilitate a greater likelihood of students asking questions of each other(supporting their learning together).
Chat Room Feature
I chose to add a Chat room to my Moodle LMS to balance out the asynchronous nature of the online course. I believe that the majority of the discussion will asynchronous; however there may be times when students would like to be online at the same time. When planning group work, or meeting to discuss a project, it may be beneficial to chat synchronously instead of waiting for e-mail or discussion posting replies.
Step 3: What is your Rationale?
Our online school, the Peace Academy of Virtual Education (Pave), is located in Northern Alberta. We are part of the Grande Prairie’s county school division, and our students are spread out over a large geographical area. Because of the large distances between students, our students rarely meet face to face. Students complete the majority of their work online, at their own pace.
With the geographical and schedule distance between students, it is important to set up a course in which students can feel they are part of a learning community. To create this community, students need to feel included and comfortable. I use the discussion forums to help create this environment. The asynchronous discussions are fairly non-threatening since students can read and re-read their information before they post. So far it seems as though students are pretty comfortable adding information to the discussion boards that we have used in the past. The chat feature is the synchronous version of the discussion forum. I have a chat room available, but I also leave the use of it as optional. If students wanted to meet in the chat room to discuss a group project or some topic of interest, then they are welcome to do so, however, this feature is not a requirement. Our students work at their own schedules (they must still be finished course work by the end of June), so the asynchronous discussion forums are definitely the main communication tool.
It is very easy to track student activity since all posting have a student name and picture next to each posting. Also, Moodle allows you to view student activity logs. These logs show you all of the activity by each student (days they logged in, what they opened and what they added).
Potential issues with the discussion forum and chat features include the ability to translate speech into text (sometimes it can be tough to get your thoughts across in text). Issues may also include a fear of having your thoughts in text, then available for others to scrutinize. Depending on class size, the discussion may not have enough students to conduct a discussion (sometimes we only have 5 students in a course), or if the class size is large (like our ETEC 565 course); there may be an overwhelming number of postings to read.