Improving Student Online Interactions and Teacher’s Ability to Manage Them with the Quick Chat Moodle Plugin

In this paper, we report some results from an experimentation where a new Moodle plugin has been used by students of the Master’s programme in Mathematics. Students were divided into small random groups and engaged in online activities. They used the Quick Chat Moodle plugin to communicate while solving two tasks: the Wason’s selection task and the variant introduced by Griggs and Cox. For both tasks, each group was asked to discuss and agree on a common solution in a Group Chat, and then to share it in a General Chat where members of all groups and the teacher could join in the discussion. The Quick Chat plugin allowed students to visualize the task, the Group Chat and the General Chat in a single web page. With a similar but more complete interface, the teacher was able to follow all the Group and General Chats in real time. All data were collected using the Moodle platform and analyzed within the theoretical framework introduced by Weinberger and Fischer. In particular, we focused on one of the fundamental dimensions involved in the construction of new knowledge in computer-based collaborative environments, that is the dimension of social modes of co-construction. Preliminary findings suggest that Quick Chat indeed helps to promote student collaboration and interactions; at the same time, it also allows the teacher to actively follow all group interactions, enabling him/her to intervene when necessary and prepare the final discussion more effectively.