ANGEL Tip – What’s a Chat Room Anyway?

One of the tools available in ANGEL is the Live Chat nugget. As the name implies, this tool is for synchronous conversations, or chats. To take advantage of this tool, you would first make sure the Live Chat nugget is available in your course – usually this is present on the Communicate tab. If not, you can use the Edit Page link and then the Add Components button to add the Live Chat nugget to the page.

Next you need to add an actual chat room. You can add as many different rooms as you like. Think of them like actual rooms, with labels on the doors. If you want to chat about a certain subject or on a certain date, you would enter the room with that label. As the instructor, you determine what label you want on the “door” by naming your chat room. Or, you can have a generic chat room for general purpose use, in which case you might just call it something like Chat Room. To create a room (and give it a name), just click on the pencil icon at the top of the Live Chat nugget and then choose Add a Live Chat . Fill out the options and click Save . If you want to change any of the options you selected, you can click on the pencil icon and then click on the Edit button next to the chat room you want to edit.

Whatever you name your room and however many rooms you have in your course, there are some things you should know about chat rooms. When you enter a chat room, it’s like walking into a real room. Whatever was said before you entered is not available to you. All you “hear” (i.e., see on the screen) is what is happening when you are in the room. If you leave the room and come back in, you will no longer see the text that was on the screen when you left – it’s like starting over!

You can save a record of everything said in a chat room. To do this, you must turn Tracking to ON in the chat room settings.

You can then review all posted messages in saved chat logs. Be sure that you make it clear to your students which rooms are being recorded and which are not!