Chat

Why Chat?

In the Fall 2020 semester we are going to be using Google Chat in order to communicate with each other and to complete some of the weekly participation quick writing.

Google Chat will serve as a form of team/group messaging service for our class. Some instructors in the world also use Slack or Teams for this purpose. I also run team-based research projects with students and faculty using Mattermost. I have chosen to use Google Chat this semester since I hope that it will allow us to have richer interaction and multi-channel communication during our remote semester. Since NYU is already a G Suite institution, Chat is also integrated with other Google apps that we will use. In our class during this remote semester, I expect that it will replace using NYU Classes, a form of platform known as an "LMS" or learning management system that has been qualified by one research as "instructor-centered" (Ross).

We will use Chat to

• Share information about the class

• Engage in dialogue about elements of the course (assignments, readings)

• Organize a space for group discussion about collective work

Furthermore, the collaborative potential of group messaging systems such as Chat or Slack is of benefit in the professional world for project management and team coordination. I hope that one of the potential benefits of using this in our course is that it will provide you with the experience of working both alone and in teams that you can use in your professional lives. You might appreciate reading this study about team messaging tools and how they promote "egalitarian communication and easy sharing of content in familiar digital interfaces" (Ross).

Adopting Chat this term is an experiment that I encourage you to provide me feedback about.

What role will Chat play in this course?

You may have heard of the idea of the "flipped classroom" or "blended learning" in which alternative modes of interaction and communication are introduced to make the learning experience more engaging for students. I am betting that during this remote semester, that group instant messaging (although not totally a synchronous experience) will provide a useful means of teacher-student and student-student group interaction.

I think about Chat as a somewhat more private space than the blogs, in which we can express ourselves in a more "free-flowing and candid" manner (Forster). You may even end up reworking your contributions in Chat into more formal ideas in your public-facing blog posting! You might think of it as a kind of pre-writing!

I also am interested in the consolidating function of the rooms in Chat so that your coursework is separated from social media, and in particular, from Whatsapp. When you are not interesting in Chat for the course it should be easy to "turn it off," unlike Whatsapp.

Communicating in Chat

You can access Google Chat at chat.google.com when you are authenticated or by using the app for mobile devices. You will be added into five different rooms at chat for the course (discussions, general, experts chat, group work and random). If you drop the course, I will remove you from the rooms. At the end of the course you will be removed from the rooms.

Chat allows us to consolidate our conversations and communication into "rooms" (Slack and Mattermost call them "channels") in which we can organize different kinds of communication. So far, I have created five rooms. Inside rooms there are "threads" that we will use to organize different sub-topics.

All five of these rooms will be visible to everyone who is subscribed to the room (all classroom members). I will not open these rooms up to others from beyond our class, except the Expert Chat. It is possible to "direct message" someone in the course without everyone seeing. It is possible to tag specific members of the rooms (the members of the class) openly to include them specifically in the conversation. The only room that will have people from outside of NYU are the "experts chat" in which I will invite some colleagues in the world to join us in Chat.

It is also possible to have direct messages and linked Google Meet calls (that are like zoom, skype, etc). Since it is part of G Suite, you can share materials from Drive. The rooms and threads are searchable and can be used for your reference throughout the semester.

Room Guide

Discussions: Each week I will post a prompt about any of the aspects of the material that week as a thread. I expect that each of you will respond by designated deadline to this with some of your thoughts about the material. I will call these your quick responses-- but you can also use them to jot down reading notes. Please keep your initial answers succinct (no more than 150 words) and include them within the thread. You should engage with the quick writing of at least two others by directly replying or tagging them with @. Your responses do not need to be as long, but should demonstrate engagement with the ideas of others. Emojis are fine as a reaction, but I will be also looking for written engagement.

You will receive no feedback on individual threads, but will see in your grade sheet a 1-, 1 or 1+.

Experts Chat: We will have a few expert visits to the class. I will record a short interview with a practitioner in the field and post it to NYU Stream. We will have a designated few days in which the room will be open to discuss with the expert asynchronously. This will be in lieu of quick writing that week.

General: This room is generally for housekeeping matters, questions related to the course structure or questions about the platforms we will be using. I will make any announcements / reminders here. I may also share files here, a copy of which will also be kept in our course drive folder.

Random: A room for sharing course-related or non-course-related content and news. This could include aspects of the course that you see in real life, or just animal pics.

Group Work: This room will have thread for groups working together on course work. I will also be possible to work together in groups via DM. I can field group work questions here as well.

On Managing your Participation in Chat

We will use Chat as a means of communication to straddle synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication. While we may end up speaking to each other in real time, it is also possible that we will not have internet access all the time, that we may choose to have some time away from our devices or fellow students may be sleeping in another timezone. This means that we should be patient in Chat and expect different kinds of conversations to take place.

I do not want anyone to feel overwhelmed by Chat. It may take some time for us to get used to this style of communication as a class. Here are some tips I adapted from Griffis:

• Remember that you can easily set your availability and even set a "do not disturb" status for several hours -- this will be important if you choose to install the app for your phone and it's time to go to bed or you need some time out or concentration time.

• Remember that no one will be able to respond super fast to your contributions. In the general room, I will not be checking messages generally after dinner time until the next morning.

• Default to public messages. Chances are that if you have a question, someone else does too. The general room is for course housekeeping questions.

• Tag someone if you would like to acknowledge them for their contribution or bring them into the conversation. Think about this the way you would in terms of an equitable, balanced conversation in the classroom. Use a positive, constructive tone to engage with your colleagues with respect.

• If there is something that we need in order to understand your communication, attach it (a link, a screenshot, a doc). This will keep the conversation moving in a targeted, sharp way.

• Thread the conversations when you can (I mean use the reply function to an existing conversation). Search for keywords and use an appropriate thread if it exists.

• If you choose to have notifications for Chat, you don't have to check them all the time. Just like with other messaging, consult them for when you have some downtime.

What can we not do in Chat?

I encourage you to think about chat as an unencrypted messaging system, one that is private to the members of the class. Just as with other forms of remote delivery, Zoom or Teams, NYUAD policy states that we will not be allowed to share screenshots or excerpts of the interactions in class with others outside the course, and for no reason, should they appear in social media of any kind, including Whatsapp, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.

Your instructor will not be able to give feedback or grades, discuss grades, share personal information, or discuss sensitive issues in Google Chat. These need to be addressed by email or a zoom session.

A Zotero library that I curated on using team messaging in the classroom / team-based work can be found here (including the various authors mentioned above).