CHATVERSATIONS AND OTHER PUPOSEFUL USES OF CHATIN VIRTUAL TRAINING
The chat feature on virtual platforms allows trainers and participants to send messages on the screen. Messages can be sent privately to individual users or to the entire group. Typically, chat is used by presenters to send links and resources, and to provide technical support. Participants often use chat to send a quick “thank you” at the end of a training. But the chat tool can be used for so much more. Consider these ideas:
- Create chatversations—a conversation in chat. Expert virtual trainer Kassy LaBorie writes, “Encourage participants to use chat to ‘talk’ to the trainer and to one another. Participate in the dialogue yourself, verbally responding as if it was said out loud. Call on people to share more, to elaborate, to connect with each other. Using the chat feature in this way turns the typed words into a conversation and creates a more comfortable learning environment.”
- Create an expectation for interaction and active participation by engaging trainees with an open-ended question as they join the training. People are often more comfortable dialoguing by typing in the chat rather than unmuting to speak. For example, “What is the most challenging time of day in a toddler classroom? Type your thoughts in chat.” Open-ended sentence completion prompts work similarly. “The most challenging time of day in a toddler classroom is ________.”
- Likewise, chat may be used as a closer by inviting participants to type their ideas in response to a prompt. For example, “In the chat, share one thing that you will do or do differently tomorrow as an outcome of our time together today.”
- Invite participants to reinforce a key term or phrase by typing it in chat. This creates quick and meaningful interactivity for all participants simultaneously. For example, “Everyone, type the word intentional in chat.”
- Ask participants to respond to a true/false, agree/disagree or other either/or type question by typing their response in chat. For example, “Type T in chat if this statement is true. Type F if it is false.”
- Assign participants in pairs to discuss a topic using private chat. This is similar to holding a conversation with the person sitting next to you in an in-person training and is an alternative to a verbal conversation between two participants in a virtual breakout room.
Trainers use chat most effectively by keeping the chat panel visible on their screen throughout the training. Active engagement in chat by a producer or cohost when available is also helpful. Remember to stop talking to give participants time to think and type when asking for a response in chat. People will respond, but trainers have to wait for it!
The chat feature can be a simple but powerful tool for virtual participant interaction and active engagement with the content.