Interactions

There are many ways for you to interact with instructors, and other fellow students at Orpacific University of Technology. Beside physically meeting up with them if they are geographically near to you, we have the following online methods.

Announcements: This is mainly for the university or instructors to give you program specific instructions from time to time. You should regularly check the announcement board of your module for updates. If an announcement is important, the university or instructor may send an email or SMS notification to you to remind you to check for the important announcement.

MyBlog: For you to keep an online journal of your personal views of certain aspects of the program, and inviting others to give their views. All the personal blogs are link to a forum page, where you can publicise your recent writings. There is a rating system where visitors will rate your postings. If you are rated highly, your posting will get to the top of the blog@forum, giving you even better exposure. In your blog page, you are the centre of attraction. Comments revolve around you, quite unlike public forum.

Emails: You may send emails to your instructors right off the Orpacific learning portal. In certain courses you may also be able to send emails to the other course participants. This will depend on the privacy rating of that particular module.

SMS: In case you are travelling and have no access to the internet, messages to and from you can be sent via the Orpacific learning portal. Your mobile phone number is private to you and if you not wish to reveal it to others, the Orpacific SMS gateway is an extremely useful media.

The course forum is one of the main tool of the Orpacific communication tools. It is a multimedia forum, meaning you can type, leave a vocie message or draw a submission. The various multimedia modes allow easy discussion of academic and project matters.

When you are attending a lesson, you may ask questions or give responses to the instructors' question via the "Chat" tab of the rls platform. All your responses or comments on the lesson will be automatically uploaded to the course forum. Once it is uploaded to the course forum, they can be viewed by the instructors or other students. Everyone can then participate in discussing your comments or questions.

You will also be able to see what other learners have asked and participate in the discussion. This gives rise to a vibrant study environment. Of course, the process of participation is made easy by the multimedia input modes. You will not be restricted to typing, therefore making a contribution is easier. Very often it is so much easier to just verbalise your comments.

Discussionn can arise from the comments coming from learners asking questions while going through the lessons. Everyone is also able to start new threads, and discussion take place in the same manner as before.

Another mode of communication is the chat and discussion platform. The chat and discussion platfrom is a live chat room. It will be scheduled regularly by the course instructor.

You will find the Orpacific chat and discussion room rather different from other chat rooms that you have used before.

In the Orpacific Chat and Discussion room, you will on entering, choose to sit down on one of the empty chairs. You can choose to sit next to your friends, at least in cyber space.

Inputs are through two channels. For contributions to the main discussion topic of the day, you will send it through the Whiteboard input. You contribution will remain on the center whiteboard for at least six seconds before it is moved to the whiteboard history area, if there are other incoming contribution to the main whiteboard. This six seconds (at least) will ensure your contribution gets the necessary attention.

If you need to say something, but not quite related to the topic of the day, you can send it through the chatter channel, either for all to read or just just as personal message to one of seated participants in the room. Your input will appear on the dialogue box above your seat, and it will remain there until you vacate your seat. Therefore whoever interested in your chatter will see your chatter all the time at the box above your seat. They will not be "rolled" off the screen in the midst of the many other chatters coming from other users.

With the chattter separated from the main discussions, attention is also better focused, making the Orpacific chat and discussion platform a great tool for real discussion, and without clamping your style.

The whiteboard history of the chat and discussion platform will be archived for later viewings. Chatter history will not be logged.