11028

11028

General Session - Conference Presentation Only (no formal paper)

Interacting with Students through a Cbox
Reima Al-Jarf, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, reemasado@msn.com

Each faculty member at my university has a website where he/she posts course descriptions, tests, publications, resources and others. Some instructors have added a Chatbox (Cbox) to their website (or blog) to be able to instantly communicate with their students. A Cbox is an advanced web messaging/commenting/tagging widget and a unique chat and messaging application that brings the best features of traditional chat and tagging systems to the social web. The present study aims to find out the percentage of language instructors who have added a Cbox to their websites, types of issues and concerns that students communicate to their instructors and students and instructors’ views of the advantages and disadvantages of using a Cbox as a communication tool. Data were collected using interviews and content analysis of the students and instructors’ posts. It was found that only 9% of the instructors at my college use a Cbox. Between 50 and 586 messages were posted. Participants reported that a Cbox is a quick and easy way of communication. Students post questions about the course content, difficulties, administrative issues, rules and regulations, registration and drop-add issues, grades, exams, and personal, social and college events. Instructors provide advice, reassurance, clarify difficulties and respond to queries in a maximum of 4 hours. They post messages and responses at their own convenience. However, Cboxes have no terms and conditions of use, cannot be monitored, are open to the public, anybody can post a message, are not user-friendly, and whatever is posted is disclosed to the public.

All Audiences chatbox CMC interaction widget social web