Blackboard Instant Messenger: Virtual Office Hours

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1 Blackboard Instant Messenger: Virtual Office Hours Faculty can now conduct Virtual Office Hours through Blackboard Instant Messenger. To begin with, the Virtual Office Hours on BbIM are a convenient way to communicate for both faculty and students. Students and faculty members who otherwise had to travel to one of Grand Valley State Universityʼs campuses for office hour meetings can now conduct them from any place that has access to the Internet. The Virtual Office Hours can be conducted with audio and/or video chat or simply with text. The App share function allows both faculty members and students to view each otherʼs computer screens. Reviewing course work, demonstrating websites or computer programs is therefore another possible component of the Virtual Office Hours. The updated version of BbIM gives faculty the ability to send out invitations to students who do not yet use the program. That way, faculty members can easily contact students who they wish to talk to in a private meeting. This documentation will introduce you to the Virtual Office Hours feature and go over some best practices for the Virtual Office Hours. If you do not already have BbIM installed on your computer, you can follow the download instructions below. Installing Blackboard Instant Messenger To install BbIM on your computer, simply log on to Blackboard. Click Get Blackboard IM in the BbIM window. You will be directed to the download page, where you can also create a BbIM user account, which is free of charge. Finally, make sure that you select the courses you wish to be included into BbIM. 1

2 Blackboard Instant Messenger Layout If you click on the Classmates tab you can see the classes that you teach displayed along with all students that are enrolled in the classes. BbIM users who are currently logged into the program will have a displayed next to their name. You can start a conversation with these users as long as they are logged in. The on the other hand indicates that the user is not logged in at the current time. Please note that you do not have to add students to your contacts to communicate with them. Students who already have BbIM installed and a username will have a displayed next to their name. These users will not be in your contact list. This means that while you can contact them (provided they are logged into BbIM), they can only contact you during your Virtual Office Hours. Clicking the will add a user to your contacts. 2

3 Configuring Your User Profile You may wish to add a personal image and a short description to your BbIM user profile. The description could for example include the times of your Virtual Office Hours. To customize your profile click on Blackboard IM in the upper menu bar and select Preferences. In the Preferences window, click on Profile. You can now add an image to your profile and a description. Additionally, you can provide other users with links to websites. 3

4 Virtual Office Hours To open up a new Virtual Office Hours session, click on Availability Settings dropdown menu. In the Availability Settings menu you can change your current status, which in turn will be displayed to all your contacts on BbIM. To start a Virtual Office Hours session, click on Office Hours. If a student enters the room, he or she will first be placed on the waiting list. Once you are ready to talk to the student, click the Promote button and the student will enter the room. You can send students on the waiting list a message informing them about the remaining wait time. Students who enter the room after a previous conversation with another student will not be able to see the previous conversation. 4

5 In Queue Chat settings, if you allow interruptions a separate chat window will open from a user who sends you a message to allow you to individually chat with that user. That user will also be prompted with a join message. You can tell the user to join. If you do not allow interruptions you will not know if a user attempts to message you while youʼre in a Queue regardless of who that user is. Be judicious with the use of video and App Share at the same time. Also, be understanding that users on dial up or other slow connections may not be able to see some or all of your presentation. If you are working with a user who has dial up only text chat is recommended. Before beginning an App Share, shut down or minimize any items you do not want seen by someone who may be participating in that App Share. Do not walk away from your computer while conducting a chat session of any type unless you lock the computer and/or log out of the computer. Always log out of BbIM (and any other application to which you log in) as soon as you are finished using it and/or if you need to walk away for even a moment. Any content broadcast via BbIM (audio, video, chat, and/or App Share) can be captured. Use appropriate discretion when utilizing this technology. If students are in the waiting room you can see chat that occurs in that waiting room. Itʼs a good idea to notify students of this up front. Set clear expectations in your interaction about your feelings regarding use of correct grammar, spelling, punctuation and non use of text speech (such as acronyms like LOL, etc.) in instant messaging. It is recommended that you arrive early for your queued chat/office hours to ensure all the technology is working properly and youʼre available at the start time of the queued chat/office hours. All chat logs should be retained in the case that a chat log is needed in the process of managing a grade appeal or other academic issue. See Archiving Virtual Office Hours on page 9 for more information. 5

6 Inviting Users to BbIM Blackboard Instant Messenger allows you to send out invitations to your students who do not yet have a BbIM account. This new function is especially useful if you are planning to offer virtual office hours through BbIM. In this short handout you will find out how to see which students do not have BbIM and how to send them an invitation to download the instant messenger program. Once you are logged onto BbIM, click the Classmates tab. This will display all the courses that you are teaching. If you expand the course tab, BbIM will display a list of all the students enrolled in the course. 6

7 Once you click the Invite button to send out the invitation. symbol, you can add an optional message to the recipient. Click the The student(s) will receive an , prompting him or her to download BbIM. Apart from directly inviting users from within BbIM, you can also invite users through Blackboard. The advantage of this method is that you can invite multiple users at the same time. Log into your Blackboard account and click on Get Blackboard IM in the BbIM module on your Blackboard overview page. In the new window you will see all the courses displayed that you are teaching. If there are students in any of the course who do not yet have BbIM, a link will be displayed next to the course name showing how many users can be invited. Once you click on this link, you can send out an invitation simultaneously to all users in your course. Click Send Invitation to finish the process. 7

8 Archiving Virtual Office Hours Blackboard Instant Messenger allows users to archive single chats or automatically archive all chats. The function to automatically archive all chat sessions in BbIM can be enabled or disabled according to the usersʼ preferences and the nature of the topics discussed by the users. How do I enable/disable the automatic chat log function? To enable/disable the automatic chat log function simply follow these steps: Step 1. In BbIM click on Blackboard IM at the top and select Preferences. Step 2. In the Preferences window you now have the option to enable/disable chat logs under the general settings. 8

9 How do I retrieve my chat logs? Any automatically saved chat log will be stored on your hard drive. The logs will be named by individual user names and are saved in a simple text format. They contain all activity dating back to when the automatic chat saving function was enabled. To access the chat logs simply follow these steps: Step 1. Click on File and select Browse Saved Chats. Step 2. Select the chat log file with the user name you would like to view. The chat log will be displayed as is shown below. How do I archive a single chat session? Sometimes you may wish to save one specific chat session for later review and avoid having previous chat sessions displayed alongside. BbIM comes with a function that saves a chat session in an.html file, which is viewable in a browser. It will also keep the same formatting that BbIM uses. Step 1. With the chat window open click the File tab and then select Save As... Choose the file destination and click Save. You can now open the.html file in a browser or open it with programs like Microsoft Word. 9