Relevance: Why Use It? --page 1 of 6 --

We know what you're thinking: chat has a bad reputation. Our initial perceptions of online chat normally do not include the classroom. Lots of college teachers think that when students writing in IM and chat forums use smiley-face emoticons and abbreviations, their conversations do not conform to common ideas of “good” writing or “good” grammar. Then we start to worry that this bad, informal writing will transfer over to the classroom practices. As we mentioned earlier, mass media has done much to perpetuate negative stigmas surrounding synchronous communication, and the thoughts mentioned above are just a few of the negative assumptions attached to online chat writing.

This lesson suggests something more radical—that online chat has real benefits for classroom situations, not only because we know students already use chat and IM extensively, but also because online chat actually can do things for students that even face-to-face communication cannot. Completing this lesson will show you some pedagogical benefits of online chat, while telling you about recent critical scholarship that backs up the idea that synchronous digital writing when framed and used as part of a comprehensive learning plan can be a very effective way to teach students.

Lesson 2 “Why Use It” should take about 20 minutes to complete.