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*Pilot Tool*

This tool is being offered on a limited pilot basis. You will not find it in the standard list of tools available in Site Info > Edit Tools. If you want to add it to your site, please submit a HelpSU ticket to request it.

This tool has yet to be thoroughly tested by our team and may have performance and/or functional problems we have not yet discovered. In terms of support, we ask that instructors take on the responsibility of fielding 'how to use the tool' questions from their students as part of the terms to using this tool in their CourseWork sites. The CourseWork team will provide limited support in fielding the following types of problems:

• system errors resulting from accessing and using the tools (e.g., exception reports)
• permission issues (e.g., ability to use admin options)

What it does

You can use the Chat Room tool for real-time, unstructured conversations among site participants who are signed on to the site at the same time.

Instructors can easily create an "Online Office Hours" chat room for student questions and answers. Dispersed collaboration groups can use Chat as a space to have conversations across distances or catch up with conversations that they may have missed.

Key concepts

Multiple rooms: Site leaders can use Options to add rooms to accommodate more than one discussion. Participants can click Change Room to access other discussions.

Display: Changes you make in Options also apply to how the Chat Room features appear to site participants.

Things to consider

• The Chat Room tool alerts users to other participants who have entered the same chat room. This way, users know who is available to talk.
• All chat messages are archived and can be read by any site participant.
• The Chat Room tool does not provide a way to chat privately. By default, all messages are visible to all participants. However, you can remove read access for a particular role, and thereby for all participants with that role, by modifying the Chat Room permissions.