Educational Chat Classification

Category	Purpose	Characteristics	Moderator's role	Examples	Subcategories
Free-topic chat	Practice language, Learn about and explore web tools.	Shared with friends. No pre-established agenda. Different threads are going on at the same time. Each one joins the conversational thread of his/her interest. Free turn taking.	Free moderation. Distributed leadership.	Webheads’ Sunday meetings at Tapped In. Students practice English during week-ends.
Collaborative Task-oriented Chat	Participants get together in a chat to accomplish a real-life task.	Participants share a common goal. There is a need for a product. Learners autonomy.	There is not need for a moderator. The same group establishes the norms, and handles the situation to complete the task in the time they have available.	Discussion after a video viewing lesson. Cooperative Group activities (jig-saw). Students get together online to discuss a final project.
Presentation or  Academic Seminar Chat	Presenting material to an audience: Program to be presented Research results Methodologies The goal is not to inform, but to educate, that is, "draw forth" ideas or explore a specified topic, based on information provided external to the chat.	The moderator has prepared the material beforehand and the topic to be discussed has been previously announced to the audience. Guest presenters may be invited. The moderator could prepare 3-4 questions to consider and try to keep audience into focus on those topics, and change topics periodically throughout the chat time, e.g. 10 min. for discussion of each question.  Reflections: -Could one chat be intended within one of the subcategories turn into another through the process in-action?	Reflections:  Should the moderator keep on track despite side issues that arise, or anticipated questions asked by the audience? Latecomers to the chat do not know the approach set, and being eager to participate, the discussion may take different roads and not get where it was supposed . What should the moderator do? -Establish procedure at the beginning- negotiated with participants? -Inform that the question will be answered later? -Evaluate the importance of keeping on track by reverting to original topic, against the weight of the unexpected query?	Students present final project. Presenting this taxonomy to an audience of teachers.	Workshop Moderator shows how to do something and audience completes the task too.
					Demonstration Presentation followed by questions and discussion.
					Swap All or some participants bring topic, questions or materials to share and discuss about.
					Presentation Moderator presents information and audience listens and asks questions.
					Discussion Presenter brings a question or topic to discuss about
Practice Chat	Participants, using the chat, practice a skill or strategy with other participants and the moderator eg. a given function of a language	Very closed-topic chat Individual or group activity.	Moderator usually establishes the rules and turn taking style.	Role playing an interview Practicing reporting genre Individual or group tutoring.
Evaluation Chat	Asses students’ learning gains.	Teacher prepares questions to give to student(s).	Moderator / teacher can give immediate feedback.	Written questions or topics to be developed by individual learners. Debates on a given topic with a group of students.