First draft of the idea: have one or two Grad TAs logged in a chat room at any given time between 9am and 5pm.
Possible improvements to think about:
- Have the chat room be available later in the night (say until 9pm for example). I don't know if this is even possible, but it might prove very popular to the students.
- Having access to a script that can read LaTeX would prove very useful.
I'm really interested to know if I'm the only one thinking this is a great idea. If so, I'll try to make this a reality for the coming Fall term.
Posts
Actually, I just noticed that it apparently already exists for the AMS : have a look here.
ReplyDeleteWhen I asked Djun about the possibility of a chat, I was first thinking of it as natural extension for WeBWork. But indeed, a general online help centre would be great!
Here is a small summary of SFU's online homework in Math using LON-CAPA, another major open-source system like WeBWorK, which incorporates an online forum for students to discuss their questions (they have randomized numbers in the same problems).
ReplyDeleteAn important feature is that students can help each other on problems - though some TA help seems like a good idea. Consider that a forum with persistent posts might be more useful for students in some ways than a live, ephemeral chat. Maybe both? Or have interesting/useful chat logs posted on the accompanying forum by the TA?
I like the idea of a mix system with both a chat and a forum. I think they would be pretty complementary to each other. One could also imagine a forum dedicated for a specific course or section. A good example of this are the numerous math forum of York University, look for example at : this link. A list can be found here.
ReplyDeleteUnlike York's, it would be very useful to be able to use LaTex code (that for instance can be used on Wordpress), in order to be able to have something neat.