Educational Group Chat Role in the Online digital Era

Education methods are changing. Online teaching using new teaching resources, and teaching tools are part of the revolution. In today’s world Educational group chat is one of a teacher’s best friends.

Today 30% of Australian students between 4-16 years old are learning In Homeschooling programs. In The US, Homeschooling is growing exponentially.  In the Department of Education research, the info we read is pretty conclusive. It certainly shows Multiple Data Points increased in the past years.

But that is not all, teaching methods are changing for all, from students to coaches, psychologists and more.

This means that the tools that help educate the next generation are also changing.

So… what has changed? What are the advantages? What is an Educational Group Chat?

  • Group discussion
  • Private chats
  • Private calls (video and audio)
  • Read messages when you can

Spoiler: Get your group chat for your website or class

Educational Group Chat

As for traditional education. It faced its challenges. The world is changing faster and faster.  We see that the internet is a major boom factor and the number of university students is declining in certain areas as the old role of a traditional educator with a ruler in his hand is no longer needed. The internet started the revolution.

Educational Group Chat for Teachers

In the old world, Teachers are responsible for delivering educational material to students.
It shows that traditional teaching is still the best as long it will adopt certain tools to help them reach students more efficiently.

A teacher is the most important factor in strengthening the education system because they must be fully equipped with the latest knowledge and understanding about the new technology.

education chat - homeschooling Teacher

Using educational group chat is an opportunity for students and teachers as well. Information technology-based teaching is an effective way to access students in a different area to the same classroom.

In order to deliver information technology-based teaching, or commonly known as ICT based teaching, a teacher must possess sufficient knowledge of the technology and deliver their materials. Thus, ensuring the success rate of delivering learning material.

Teaching With Educational Group Chat

Information Technology-based teaching enables a student to improve their learning and it requires teachers to improve their teaching methods. In 1978, Japan established the National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME), to prepare a new methodology for delivering educational material to students across Japan.

In one of its programs, NIME has successfully established an inter-connected Internet link in 150 universities across Japan. One of the class that we saw, was conducted with Koichi Wakata, a Japanese astronaut onboard the International Space System as a guest lecturer in 2001.

educational group chat

The class was attended by 4200 students from 114 universities. This class can be classified as the most populous educational group chat ever conducted.
In 2009, NIME was merged into OUJ (Open University of Japan). It utilizes broadcasting media to deliver teaching materials for lifelong learning.

Therefore, it provides innovative means and methods of education for universities and higher education institutions to deliver the learning materials. One of them is lectures broadcast via the multimedia channel, and online courses equipped with educational group chat and chatroom at the end of each class session for quizzes and discussion between students and lecturer.

With its ease of access and teaching material delivery, OUJ now has become the largest educational institution in Japan.

Another case is in Korea with its Korea Education & Research Information Service (KERIS). Furthermore, since its establishment in 1999, KERIS has become at the forefront of providing Information Technology based learning in Korea.

Its achievement is the national educational information service called EDUNET and its research information service system or RISS, an academic cooperative network of research institutes in universities in Korea linked with other research institutes abroad. The latest advancement is KOCW (Korean Open Course Ware) to provides a service of learning materials For its relentless effort to pursue technological advancement, UNESCO awarded KERIS the first prize for ICT in education in 2007.

What are the Benefits of group chat?

With the advancement of technology in communication, information sharing has found its new method. We all know that the technology for group chats was first introduced for educational purposes at the University of Illinois back at the beginning of the Internet in 1970’s.

Nowadays, group chat room purpose for educational group chat has found a better implementation of the latest technology.

Even UNESCO, a United Nations agency for education, science, and culture has acknowledged the need for information technology for education. In 1997, UNESCO established its Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE) to provide the design and implementation of information technology in education around the world. In its report for the Internet in Education, IITE noted the importance of group chat for educational purposes.

Educational group chat is important for constructive learning along with other Internet communication methods such as group chat and mailing lists.

We have seen how group chat and its technology is considered serious tools for education and learning purposes. From the beginning of its creation, a group chat was designed primarily for educational purposes.

Therefore, it is reasonable that Internet-based education will always consider educational group chats as a means for delivering teaching materials and knowledge sharing.

Get your own educational group chat and embed it in no time on your website or class.

How To Integrate A Chat Room Into Your WordPress Members Plugin?

If your WordPress hosted website has a membership option (plugin), there is a 50% chance that you are using a WordPress members plugin. As you probably know, members-only chat room is something that is essential for community engagement, whether a daily chat or once in a while.

Before we dig into the group chat plugin, let’s first understand the member’s plugin concept. There are several WordPress member plugins, though they all essentially perform the same function. Plugins allow a webmaster to set up a members-only area on their website with exclusive content and special features.

Choosing the right plugin for your site is important, as the various features the plugins offer can affect how many people stay engaged on your website.

Below, we will answer a few questions you may have regarding the integration of a chat room into your WordPress members’ plugins.

What Are Members Chat Rooms?

A members chat room is a chat room that can only be accessed by website members.

Having a members chat room on your website can be helpful. It can encourage site visitors to become members in order to participate in conversations and join the site community.

A chat of today includes also video and audio messages and video and audio live calls.

What Types of WordPress Members Plugin to use?

When in the market for a plugin, it is important to do a little research before making a decision. There are many options out there and we will discuss a few below.

  • MemberPress – MemberPress is a good option when looking for a plugin. It is simple to set up and has quite several features. Webmasters can have a lot of control over who accesses what on their site and at what time. This plugin also conveniently allows for integration with other services you may want to use on your website. Some of these include MailChimp, MadMimi, and BluBrry. The company uses PayPal and Stripe, making it easy for members to make payments. You can choose from two versions of this plugin, either the Business Edition or the Developer Edition. Users of MemberPress often say that this plugin is one of the simplest to use with WordPress, especially for beginners.
  • Paid Memberships Pro – This plugin offers a couple of options. There is a basic version that is entirely free to use, as well as the standard version for a yearly fee and the plus version. Keep in mind the basic free version does not offer many features but may give users a taste of what they can expect in the more advanced versions. Paid Membership Pro also allows for integration with various other services and WordPress members plugins, as well as adding in the Plus version. For users who don’t have a lot of experience working with websites and plugins, this particular one may be rather difficult to use.
  • Ultimate Member – Ultimate Member is yet another option when it comes to plugins. This plugin is extremely simple to use, as no knowledge of coding is required to integrate it into your website. It adapts to mobile devices, allowing users to access members-only content from their computers as well as their mobile devices. Ultimate Member offers a number of extensions that webmasters can pay for, such as Instagram, MailChimp, and User Reviews. There are also a couple of free extensions, like the ability to display what users are online.

How to Integrate a Plugin Into Your Website

We built the RumbleTalk chat room plugin to integrate with most members plugins.
Most WordPress members plugins use the WordPress built-in user management.

RumbleTalk chat room service is integrated with WordPress built-in users management. This means that both the chat and members use the same users base and therefore are integrated by nature, the integration can take practically 1 minute.. (Note, Integration on the chat side is done with one checkbox click, we made it extra easy).

So In practice, what’s next?

You will need the two components installed in your WordPress to create chat room integration.

This can be quite handy because if you have a WordPress Members plugin installed, you can easily incorporate the Rumbletalk plugin into your WordPress website. This will allow you to have a members-only chat room.

The steps to do so are below (we just use ultimate member as an example).

members plugin with a chat room

Step 1
1 – Install the Member plugin and follow the setup instructions.

2 – Install the  RumbleTalk chat room plugin and follow the setup instructions.

Performing these two steps will automatically integrate the chat with the Members Plugin users base. By doing so, we will allow only members of the site to log in automatically to your chat with their username.

Step 2
After the installation of the plugins has finished, you then must create an account via the RumbleTalk chat plugin.

Account wordpress setup

Step 3
Once done, you will see the window below. Make sure to check the “Member” box to complete the process.

detailed info on the wp plugin

For more information and troubleshooting, check this link

You are done! 

As you can see, it is quite a simple process!  If you need more information about settings or the installation process, you can check out the introductions in here.

For any additional questions or comments, please contact us at support <the sign @> rumbletalk.com.

New Feature: Delete Files in Your Group Chat

Here’s a new feature to add a layer of privacy to your group chat. You can now delete files shared in a chat conversation, group, or private.

Privacy means a lot to most of us. Privacy comes in many forms, either territory, physical body, data, identity, or location. Nowadays, privacy is not a right anymore, it is a privilege. We hear stories from the news on how easy it is to invade our privacy.

So, here at RumbleTalk, we have some ways to help you protect your privacy. Specifically, the things you share in the group chat.

RumbleTalk’s newest feature gives you the ability to delete all uploaded images, recordings, and files, not just in the group chat but also in private conversations.

Why the need to delete files?

Most of the chat owners want to delete the messages in a group chat after an event has been finished. To keep things confidential, they wanted to delete the messages.

Then, they also wanted to delete the shared files on that chat. So, we had an idea to add this as a feature for our existing customers.

How do we do that?

  • In your RumbleTalk admin panel, click the settings and choose History.
delete files
  • After that, you will see the History page. In there, you have an option to save the chat transcript or delete all the messages that were delivered to your group chat.
delete files
  • There is a check box (Also delete files). Check that box to delete all files.
  • Then, click Yes, clear the chat history to delete the entire chat history.

Now, all files that you have sent to the group chat and private chat will be deleted.

As you can see in this example, the users sent multiple files and images in the group chat and private chat. However, after checking the Clear Files check box, they were instantly deleted.

This is how easy it is to delete all files in your group chat.

You can also refer to the knowledge base article and use it as a guide.

Deleting files and more

RumbleTalk is always adding new features to keep our customers happy. This is just one example of how we have added a feature based on our customers’ suggestions.

We have more features coming in the near future. So, if you want to be updated with the latest news, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Let us know your comments and suggestions by contacting us on our website. We always put our customers first.

Sign up to RumbleTalk today and start chatting!