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Faculty Technology Skills
- Moderate level familiarity with chat room and bulletin board systems and methods
- Moderate level familiarity with the Internet and ability to download and install software
Student Technology Skills
- Ability to follow instructions and discussion board netiquette guidelines
- Some typing ability
Faculty Equipment
- For real-time chat sessions: networked, individual student computers.
- For 24/7 discussion forums: Possibly, though not totally essential, a proprietary
bulletin board software program (Blackboard, WebCT, Course Compass, and WebBoard are
just a few of the many commercial software systems available) set up so that students
can call into a server and log on and enter the system. Having actual ownership of a
bulletin system will allow greater control over the limits of user access and content.
Another plus is that these systems generally also provide other benefits such as student
tracking, archiving, personal web pages, and announcement areas.
Student Equipment
- For real-time chat sessions: Schools provide the necessary individual computers.
- For 24/7 discussion forums: access to computers and an Internet connection is required.
Cost
- For real-time chat sessions a normal networked computer lab setting
- For 24/7 discussion forums user rights to a bulletin board software system and a server
accessible to students through the Internet. Again, the same general advantages of anonymous
discussions could also be achieved free by using public bulletin board systems available through
online providers such as Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and so on. Naturally, the free and grand daddy of them
all would be the global network of Internet Newsgroups or Usenet. Google.com is one of the better
and most user-friendly sites through which to access Internet newsgroups.
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