Synchronous Chat Q & A

Here's something I did with my web design class that I think made good use of both my students and the technology of synchronous chat.

Using a chat room, students, who had read fifty pages in the text book for that day, wrote questions they had about the reading. For eight minutes they entered their questions into the chat room. After eight minutes, they were allowed to start answering the questions for each other. We made it competitive.

There were some interesting results. One student said he answered his own question by answering someone else's. Another student, an ESL student, thought the whole assignment was a great idea. She suggested I make the questions available separately after they're posted, and this I will do from now on.