ONLINE CHAT SESSIONS! CHAOS OR....?

Peter Hillery, Northern Sydney Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) <peter.hillery@det.nsw.edu.au>

ABSTRACT
Whenever three or more people are involved in an online chat session, it usually develops into a number of separate, simultaneous "conversations", all mixed together. This can be very confusing for new initiates and frustrating for experienced users.

At a recent online conference conducted by the Northern Sydney Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE), we decided to impose some structure onto a couple of the online chat sessions. Each session had, at least, a "chairman" and "speaker" and attendees were asked to follow certain "rules".

This presentation will describe how we organised, planned and conducted these online chat sessions and some of the feedback we received.

INTRODUCTION
During TAFE Week in August 1998, Northern Sydney Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) organised an online conference: "Skilling for a global future - challenges of flexible learning". _Webboard_ software was used which enabled a _Library_ section, a _conference_ section and online chat sessions. Indepth papers were placed in the _Library_. The _conference_ section was divided into five forums, each with various topics. Participants could respond to other's comments and / or start new discussion topics. This conference section operated in a similar fashion to news groups. Attendees only needed a Java enabled browser to participate in any activity.

A number of people were asked to act a conference _moderators_, most of us having little or no experience. After some of the moderators trialed an online chat session, we decided to consider putting some _structure_ around some chat sessions as the following e-mail extract shows:

Brian (moderator) to Lucy (conference organiser):

A small group of dedicated moderators have spent a couple of hours this afternoon practicing 'chat' on the conference web board.

It has become obvious that

A) we need more experience of chatting between now and TAFEWEEK

B) We need published 'protocols' for people using the chat facility so we can make sense of all the conversations.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RULES
As a result of our own frustration in Online chat sessions, the moderators started looking at "imposing some structure" to achieve "something meaningful" out of these sessions as the following e-mail extract shows.

Peter (moderator) to Keith (fellow moderator):

Here are some of my thoughts on how an online chat session could work.

First, we have to realise that preparation is necessary and vital. Good preparation is the key to the success of any enterprise, and online chat sessions are no exception.

Chat sessions should have a definite, well advertised start time. They probably should also have a definite finish time, with the option to extend for those who wish. I suggest a session should also have a chairman, a speaker and protocols for participation. These suggestions are modelled on a formal address to an audience by an invited speaker.

The format could be: an introduction by the chairman, presentation by the speaker followed by a question and answer session involving the speaker and participants, controlled by the chairman.

The role of the chairman is to introduce the speaker, inform the participants of the protocols for participation and supervise the question / answer session. Unless the chairman has fast, accurate typing skills, the preparation will include pre typed out speaker introduction and protocols. I suggest these be typed out (in something like notepad or a word processor) in small "chunks" that can be easily copied and pasted into the chat software.

One of the protocols could be that participants who wish to ask a question should "whisper" that intention to the chairman, who keeps track of who is going to ask question no. 1, no. 2, etc. The chairman would "whisper" back to that participant, acknowledging their desire to ask a question, informing that they will be invited to ask question no 5 or no 6 or whatever, and finally inviting the questioner to prepare (i.e. type up) their question, ready to submit it when invited.

Another role for the chairman would be to inform "late comers" of the participation protocols. These would need to be pre typed up and whispered to the late comers using copy and paste.

The speaker would need to have their presentation typed up (in notepad or a word processor) and in suitable "chunks" which are copied and pasted into the chat session. Numerous possibilities exist for the speaker to augment their presentation. For example, they could ask participants to look at another web site by using a second copy of their web browser and returning to the chat session after some time, say 3 minutes or whatever.

During the question / answer part, the chairman invites participants to submit their question (in the order organised by "whisper"). A problem I see here is that the speaker's responses are the only parts which can not be pre typed up and unless the speaker has good typing skills, this may become slow. Participants would need to be reminded to be patient here. Another problem may be follow up questions.

Towards the end of the session, the protocols could become more relaxed and spontaneous chat could take place, maybe even to the point of some people going to another room to discuss some area of mutual interest.

The session should probably end with the chairman inviting the speaker for some closing remarks. It may be hard for the speaker to prepare any such comments as these are often in response to the question / answer session.

I'm interested in your thoughts in this kind of approach to online chat sessions.

THE FIRST FORMALISED CHAT SESSION
The first "speaker" is approached to trial this process:

Peter (moderator) to Greg (invited speaker):

Greg,

. . . .However, what I would really like to do is have a "practice chat session" with all involved in the "Flexible Delivery in Practice" forum. I feel that chat sessions need preparation and a bit of structure to be successful. I would like to try out a few ideas before we get to the real thing.

I feel each session needs a "chairman", a "speaker" and some "rules".

The format could be:

Introduction by chairman

Short presentation by speaker. This would be prepared beforehand and copied and pasted into the chat session, sentence by sentence, so that the presentation is not too slow. This would probably be only 5-6 paragraphs. Maybe longer ...

Question and answer period - "controlled" by the chairman

General "free for all" discussion.

The "rules" would be something like:

Up until the "free for all" discussion, no one "speaks" unless invited by the chairman

During the chat session, members of the audience whisper to the chairman their desire to ask a question.

During the question and answer period, the chairman invites, one after another, members of the audience, who have indicated their desire, to ask their question. This question should be already typed up, ready to submit after the chairman whispers back to them that: "Yes, you can ask a question, and you will be the question after .... "

Greg, I would be interested in trialing a slightly more formal chat session something like the above. If I try to organise something for say, this Thursday afternoon, 2-3pm, would you be interested in being the "speaker", with me as the chairman and an invited audience of all the invited contributors to the Flexible Delivery in Practice forum and all the conference moderators. I leave the topic of your presentation to you - maybe something about your flexible delivery experience.

So what do you think, Greg? Is it worth having a trial like this?

THE FIRST TRIAL
So the first trial with Greg as speaker, myself as chairman and an invited group of moderators as audience was conducted. Greg has a lot of online teaching experience, working at introducing online facilities to TAFE's distance education. After the trial which was conducted along the lines described above, I e-mailed Greg for his reaction and received the following:

Greg (speaker) to Peter (moderator), including quotes from Peter's original e-mail:

Peter wrote:

I was quiet happy with how the session went. One comment - I don't think the medium allows us to get into indepth discussion. So far, it appears we can only discuss issues at a superficial level. Is this your experience also?

Greg's response:

Yes, this has been my experience with all chat sessions, limited in number as they are. I think the structure you imposed today made it much more possible. I needed a protocol to indicate I'd finished answering the question. By the end I was using '...' to indicate there was more coming and 'END' to signify I was stopping.

In a face to face conference, the questioner is allowed to make a response to the answer but we didn't have a protocol for the questioner to say they were satisfied with the answer and therefore we could move on to the next question. In face to face this is indicated by the questioner sitting down, nodding an appreciation or saying Thanks. This allows the question to be fully explored in depth. I don't know if this is appropriate in chat sessions.

Peter wrote:

How did you find having your presentation prepared and then copying and pasting into the chat session - did that work OK?

Greg's response:

I only wish I had. For some reason I couldn't get the Compose box to come up and had to work with the short message box that's always present. And I had to type it in as I'd been in meetings all morning and didn't get time to prepare. I felt bad about it as people would have had to wait while I was typing. Did it feel very drawn out?

Another thing I found was that sometimes text was lost because the machine was doing something else while I was typing -- probably a Mac specif problem.

In future I'd definitely prepare before hand. Perhaps starting with an overview of what I was going to say so the people would know where I was going. I'd also turn off all the other processes such as e-mail so that my browser had maximum use of the processor.. . .

Peter wrote:

Overall, I felt the session was better with a bit of structure than without it - what do you think?

Greg's response:

Definitely, although I suspect participants fall into two camps: those that want fast, short interactions and those, including myself, that are happier with more indepth exchanges that develop and lead somewhere. I'm for more structure...

Peter wrote:

Anyhow, thanks for your effort Greg,

Greg's response:

You're welcome.

--Greg

Anne, who was in the audience, passed on some of her thoughts about the trial:

Anne (audience) to Peter (moderator):

Re the chat today ... I thought the structure was necessary in the first instance so that we were able to get a feel for the guest speakers topic and so that each person was able to get at least one question in before the general rabble began.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what to do but that could be due to my not having even looked for instructions (I'm a 'get in and try it' type of learner).

Can I suggest that as each person leaves the room they finish with a message to say they are going. This would be better than us waiting for a reply from people who have left.

I may think of more comments later. At the moment though I can only add that it was excellent. We should do more of it. I was able to participate in some of my normal work activities at the same time (answering phone calls, etc) so did not find it as disruptive to the day as a tele-conference (which I hate!).

I look forward to the next one. Anne

With this and other positive comments, we decided to press ahead to further develop the technique. One variation we tried was an interview.

THE INTERVIEW VARIATION
We decided to vary the presentation by "interviewing" the speaker. This session consisted of the chairman, the guest, the interviewer and the audience. For preparation, the interviewer and the guest prepared a series and questions and answers which were copied and pasted into the chat session. For this session, our guest was Roslyn Hammett from Macquarie University, Sydney. Lucy Hill, our online conference organiser, interviewed her and I acted as chairman. Lucy and Roslyn prepared a series of questions and answers to copy and paste into the online chat sessions. The following e-mail extracts, after the interview, are instructive:

Peter (moderator) to Roslyn (invited guest):

I just wished to say a very big thank you for being part of our chat session this morning. I think the "interview" format worked very well. I would go so far as to say that I think it has been the best chat session I have ever experienced. I am sure a large part of that is preparation. So thank you very much again for your efforts.

I am also very interested in hearing your comments as a "presenter", what problems you had, could we have done anything to make your job easier? do you have any ideas for improving this process? etc.

Roslyn (guest) to Peter (moderator):

Thank you Peter for the kind remarks, and yes I enjoyed the experience, which was new for me, very much.

I realised that I should have limited my prepared replies strictly to 500 words, so that they would fit in the compose box in one go. I thought they were within the limit, but when I found they weren't, that threw me a bit the first time it happened. Then I lost my window with the prepared answers, but fortunatley I had a prepared copy, and typed it in. Thanks for the experience, Lyn

Lucy (interviewer and conference organiser) to Peter (moderator):

I think it worked well. It did take a fair while to cover the questons and maybe people felt it a bit long - Were they whispering to you straight away, Peter?

I also was too nervous to shift from the set questions when Lyn didn't understand one.

Lucy

Peter (moderator) to Lucy (interviewer):

I too felt that the "interview" part was a little too long - but we are learning! It's always a balancing act about too little or too much isn't it?

Not much whispering to me indicating the desire to ask a question - but I think the "questions from the floor" session was good also. At one stage we nearly lost the continuity of that part - but we managed to get "control" again.

Thanks for your comments Lucy,

This session was "open to the public" and we asked for audience feed back. The following e-mail indicate some reaction:

Carole (audience) to Peter (moderator):

Peter,

The interview session worked very well. Did Lucy have a set of predesigned questions?

Apart from a few technical hitches the entire experience was very satisfying.

This afternoon I intend to take a few of my colleagues by the hand in the 2.00 pm session.

We are building the online expertise of two teams of people who are currently working on the development of online learning materials for two diverse fields of study - Welding and Nursing.

cheers

Carole

Claire (audience) to Peter (moderator):

Yes Peter thanks for the follow up. I really enjoyed the session. It was very well planned and I appreciated you setting the ground rules before we started- and it worked more successfully than the later one because everyone( small group) was there at the start so got the instructions.

It would be useful to be able to print out a copy of the chat as you can in some programs. Also the morning timeslot is a good idea- I always find the internet connection slows down in the afternoon and so try to schedule chats etc in the morning. Supplying the questions before hand meant that it ran very smoothly and professionally, well done- it was great. And I appreciated the 'content' information Lyn had to offer.

CONCLUSION
From our limited experience, it would appear that imposing some structure onto chat sessions have some benefits for all involved. Obviously we made mistakes, there were some technical problems and we were learning as we went but none of these problems seemed to overshadow the benefits of this imposed structure. All in all it seems this method is worthy of further investigation.