Hello Paul:
Yes, I've been using Blackboard's CoursInfo website shell since January
for a total of five courses. It's free to instructors to use, and it has
both a threaded listserv, called a Discussion Board, and also chat
rooms.
So far, I've found that the chatroom works best for smaller team
discussions of three to at most five people; so logically, the topics
tend to focus on each team's own particular project. A CourseInfo site
can support multiple chatrooms going on at once.
The logistics of getting a larger group together in a chatroom all at
the same time just hasn't worked out. When the entire class participates
in topics of interest to everyone, we all prefer to use the DB, mainly
because of the freedom associated with asynchronous communication.
Caveat... this has all occurred in an instructional support environment
as opposed to distance learning, and everybody lives in the same time
zone.
Some colleagues and I will be trying the instructional support model
across a number of time zones in the spring of 1999, and we are
anticipating that again, small and also international teams of students
will use chat rooms to communicate about their team projects; then
we'll have to deal with the time zone issue. I'd appreciate hearing how
your experience turns out, especially in regard to the time zone issue.
Eric Hansen
Paul Shrivastava wrote:
>
> I am teaching an online course on "Internet Based Teaching" with
> participants who live in many different time zones (Australia, Arab
> Emirates, Canada, Finland, New Zealand and USA-NY to CA). We are planning
> online chats using a Java Chat program. The big problem is scheduling times
> and dates when every one can participate. Do any of you have experience in
> using Chat for online courses, in conjunction with Bulletin Boards. What
> types of issues are best suited for these two modes of conversation, any
> ideas on the scheduling problem? Has any one experimented with breaking up
> the class into time zoned chat groups. I would appreciate any advice or
> guidance on these. Thanks
>
> Dr. Paul Shrivastava
> www.esocrates.com/cgi-bin/socrates.cgi?wshop001