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WebCT
Faculty Tip Sheets
Chat
Chat allows you, your students, and your teaching assistants to have real-time conversations. There are four general purpose chat rooms and one general forum for the course. There is also a general chat room for all courses, which is a room shared by everybody from all courses on the same server. Conversations in the four general purpose rooms are recorded. Students do not have access to those recordings.
To add the Chat tool to your course:
- From the Control Panel, select Add Page or Tool.
- In the Communication Tools column, click Chat. The Add Chat screen appears.
- In the Enter a title for this item text box, enter the title as you want it to appear below the icon.
- Under Decide where to show the link to this item, select where you want the link to be displayed.
- Click Add. The Chat tool is added to your course.
To enter a chat room:
- From the Course Menu, click Chat. The Chat screen appears.
- From the Chat screen, click the room that you want to enter. Note that the first four rooms can be renamed by the instructor and are recorded at all times.
- The Chat window appears. It contains three main areas:
- The Output Interaction Box displays all messages sent and received.
- The Users Logged In box shows the users presently in the room.
- The Enter your message below box where you enter your messages.
To send a message to everyone in the room:
- From the Chat screen, click the room that you want to enter. The Chat window appears.
- In the Enter your message below text box, enter your message.
- To send the message, press ENTER on your keyboard. Your message appears in the Output Interaction Box. Note: Do not type your message and then press the Send URL button. Doing so sends each of your messages in separate windows and disrupts the flow of the chat.
To send a private message to someone in the room:
- From the Chat screen, click the room that you want to enter. The Chat window appears.
- Under Users Logged In, select the recipient of the message. Tip: To select more than one recipient, hold the CTRL key (Windows), or Apple key (Macintosh) while selecting the names.
- In the Enter your message below text box, enter your message.
- To send the message, press ENTER on your keyboard. Your message appears in the Output Interaction Box of the selected recipient(s). Note: All of the messages you send will continue to be private messages until you deselect the name of the person to whom you sent the private message.
To activate the entry chime:
- From the Chat screen, click any chat room. The Chat window appears.
- Check the box next to Entry Chime. The chime sounds whenever a new person enters any chat room. You will hear the chime both in Chat and when you are working elsewhere in your course.
To modify chat room names:
Note: You can only modify the names of the four general purpose rooms.
- From the Chat screen, click the Designer Options tab if it is not already selected.
- Under Options, click Modify chat room names. The Edit Room Names screen appears.
- Modify the room name(s) and click Update. The Chat screen appears.
Note: If you change a room name, the log file name does not change. For example, if Room 1 has been renamed Lounge 1, the log file name remains room1.txt .
To view room logs:
Note: You can only view the log files (conversation records) of the four general purpose rooms.
- From the Chat screen, click the Designer Options tab if it is not already selected.
- From the View Room Log drop-down list, select a room, and then click Go. The Chat Log screen appears.
- You may:
- copy and paste the log into a file.
- clear the log. Click Clear Log. Note: If you clear the log, the log file is deleted in Manage Files. A new log file is created as soon as a message is sent from the chat room.
- edit or download the files using Manage Files. Chat room log files are in My-Files, in the Chat folder. File names are in the format roomname.txt. Note: If you change a room name, the log file name does not change.
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