by its nature
informal, emotional, full of humorous quips, and in a word, "chatty"
(see Exhibit 5 for examples of chats). Given the one-line limits to chat text,
interruptions abound. Chatters move on while someone else responds to
something said a few lines back. Although the chat is hardly recognizable as an
academic discussion, it can help generate a vital engagement with the text that
students then transfer to the message board