I agree. The time zones provide difficulty in a chat room. I think many students enroll in the online environment so they have the flexibility in their schedules. If chats are scheduled then some of this flexibility is lost.
I think this is a very difficult area. We are doing this at various times for the students, I currently have one in Japan, how do we do live chats and encompass everyone's times? I think it is great that we can have this technology, but we also have to think about all of our students, and make sure we are there for them as much as possible with the time differences. Chats may at different times may work better than trying to get everyone on at the same time for a lecture. Of course we have tools at our disposal like utube to make a video and post it so they can see it in their time and then of course we are back to email for question.
Chats are difficult, and I have noticed people say all sorts of things that they never going to say in a real class setting.
