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Instant Messaging
Instant Messenger is a program that allows real time communication with other users. After a user signs up and obtains a user name or "screen name," he or she can converse with a single user in a normal window, or with many other users in a chat room. The communication is typically textual, but live video is also available. Because of the immense popularity of IMing among students, professors are advised to keep their academic screen name separate from any others they may have. There are several IM providers, but the most widely used is AOL. One drawback to using IM is that messages are not archived; thus, while you can converse with a student in real time, there is no way to capture the session (and post it later so other students can share your knowledge, for example).
Electronic office hours
Faculty may consider setting aside a subset of their office hours to electronic office hours. Faculty can use instant communication systems such as instant messaging from AOL or course management discussion boards/chat rooms from WebCT or CourseInfo to be available to students online for an hour each week. This is a useful way for faculty to use their time reaching students directly.
Threaded Discussions
Threaded discussions can be used for a variety of purposes, but are useful in developing an online "community" promoting ongoing discussions throughout a semester for either online or face-to-face students. They can be graded or ungraded and tied to lectures, assignments or projects. They are also a good way for teachers to promote active learning and for students to get to know each other. Course management software like WebCT and CourseInfo as well as BU's Forums@BU allow for threaded discussions. A comparison of WebCT and CourseInfo is available from WebCentral.
Forums@BU
Forums@BU is an interactive web-based bulletin board available to all academic and administrative departments. A department can use forums to communicate with its students, faculty, staff, and others. Within its forum, a department can create an unlimited number of subforums. Departments can link to any forum or subforum directly from their websites. Try out the Practice Forum and if this new service can benefit your department and constituents, Request a Forum. You can also view the Teaching and Learning with Technology Forum.
Blogs
A blog, short for "weblog," is a website that displays one's entries in reverse chronological order like a journal. It can be used to post information from classes sequentially. Or students can keep individual blogs about class readings to facilitate discussion. To use a blog, one must download or buy a software package. There is a list of blog software. You can see sample blog assignments and blog grading rubrics.
Wikis
Wikis (WikiWiki is Hawaiian for "quick") are editable webpages that are very simple to design. The content is generally set to be editable by anyone in the world who views them, facilitating group projects and information sharing. See What is Wiki for a more complete description of a wiki. Seedwiki is a simple place to start making a wiki. See Wikipedia as an example of an extensive wiki.
External Webpages
Although BU webpages are provided for faculty, staff, and students, one may want an external webpage if he or she needs more space, wants to post personal information that he or she does not want on people.bu.edu, wants to maintain the website after leaving BU, or wants to use resources that are not allowed on the BU network. Although the BU resources are more than adequate for nearly all purposes, due to security restrictions, individual or personal Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts are not permitted on people.bu.edu. Wikis, online databases, may run on CGI scripts. If one can only have a webpage on people.bu.edu and wants to run a Wiki, he or she should develop an external webpage.
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