The 'chat room' is being used for social reasons, not business as it was intended. Looking for thoughts and experiences on how to maintain the high level of useage but make it more effective for all interest groups.
chris wood
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Themed with clear objectives
The most successful chat rooms I’ve encountered were themed with clear objectives that influenced the type of questions and discussions that took place.
I can remember hearing about one in the States that was used by sales representatives to discuss issues they were having around specific deals. One sales rep on the West Coast provided a good answer to a question from a rep on the East Coast, that enabled that rep to land a $500,000 deal! Needless-to-say, a success story like that did wonders for promoting the “appropriate” use of chat rooms!
Business chat rooms
I recently used a private online chatroom (it was better for me to call it a ‘virtual classroom’ maybe better for you to call yours a ‘virtual meeting’) as part of an IT course. It’s not being taken seriously by participants was a real issue, to start with.
One of the best ways of getting sensible participation was to have previously set tasks (preferably to be carried out in pairs) and use the virtual classroom sessions for each pair to give a ‘presentation’ of their findings, with (tutor prompted) comment by others on each presentation.
An online quiz – you could call yours an information exchange session – was also successful in keeping attention.
I guessed that students’ (slow) typing speed would be a turnoff to participation. So I showed my students how they could write a range of pre-prepared alternative answers in WORD (or in any text program) and then copy & paste specific ones from there into the classroom input area and send it, as appropriate.
The main criterion, however, is to make it FUN for them to ‘attend’ virtual sessions and to participate. OOh yes and keep sessions to an hour ..longer than that and you are asking for loss of interest.