Overview of Talk
Talk is where you can ask questions and discuss ideas with others in your class.
You’ll find it in your left menu when you’re inside one of your courses.
Talk channels
When you’re in Talk, you’ll see a list of channels down the left hand side. These channels are set by your learning provider and/or facilitator. Channels provide structure so that all posts relating to “Introductions”, “Questions about assessment 1” or “Workplace experiences” for example, can be grouped together.
Channels can be Public, Group or Private.
Public channels are open to the entire class. Most of your channels are likely to be public.
Group channels are where you can chat with just a subset of your class.
Private channels allow you to privately message the course facilitator(s). No one but you and the facilitator(s) can see these posts.
Remember, the channels you see in Talk are based on the particular course you are in and your learning provider.
Navigation and search
You can switch between channels by selecting the channel name in the left pane.
Use the Search at the top of Talk to find that particular piece of information you were looking for. You can search based on a keyword, or based on a person’s name.
Making your own post
To make your own post, navigate to the channel you want to post to and select Post.
You’ll see you have options to format and add to your post.
You can add attachments, links, format your text e.g. add a bulleted item, bold key words etc.
Interacting with others’ posts
A key part of Talk is interacting with others. If you’ve used social media before, you’ll find a lot of similarities.
Like
If you’re new to online discussions, you might want to start by liking a post someone has shared. Simply select Like.
Likes are anonymous and the person who wrote the post won’t be notified. But likes are really useful to a) show the person you value their contribution, and b) give others a heads up about which posts are useful!
Reply
Replying to others’ posts is the ideal way to get the conversation going. Simply select Reply on the post you want to reply to. You’ll then see the post pop up on the right, with the option to add your reply below (you’ll see you have the same formatting and attachment options as you have for making your own post).
It can be a bit daunting knowing what to say when replying to others. So, if you get stuck, we’ve got a collection of online discussion prompts to give you some ideas.
If you’re just getting started, try Liking or Replying to someone else’s post, then have a go at making your own post!
Report
If you see a post that you think should be reported to the facilitator to moderate, select Report on the relevant post. This will hide the post for you and the facilitator will be able to moderate the post. As with Likes, Reports are anonymous and the person who wrote the post won’t be notified.
Note: Reports are not anonymous for the facilitator's view.
In-app and email notifications
If you have any unread Talk channel posts or responses they will show in the in-app notifications appearing by the bell icon in the top right-hand corner of iQualify and next to the talk icon (green circle icon).
Note: email notifications default to off, so you need to turn on email notifications if you want to receive them.
Summary
Talk is where you can ask questions and discuss ideas with others in your class. The exact channels you have in Talk will depend on the course, and your learning provider.