Virtual Office Hours
Having virtual office hours provides more flexibility for your students to get in touch with you and discuss any questions they might have about the course content. Virtual office hours can be more flexible for you since you are able to interact with your students synchronously from anywhere in the world (as long as you have Internet access).
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Chat (a.k.a. Collaboration in Blackboard)
Different than Discussion Boards, the Chat room is for same-time or "live" communication among students and their instructors. You can create multiple Chat rooms, or reuse the same one over and over again. One may also archive Chat sessions in Blackboard.
There are two different Chat styles in Blackboard: Chat and Virtual Classroom. Chat is purely text with no management abilities on the faculty side. This tool is ideal for virtual office hours, where a student or two might "drop in" for a casual set of questions and answers.
Virtual Classroom adds the functions of a White Board, a question queue, students "raising their hands", pushing of web sites and content from the Blackboard course. This is more for the true virtual lecture, where you can manage who asks questions, and which questions you answer, etc.
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