OSTC Information Page

BASIC INFORMATION

The OSTC itself resides within the ANGEL platform at AACC, which is the same platform that our online courses use.

We provide live chats that work like virtual office hours. Only certain science courses are targeted each semester, but all students registered for these courses have access to the OSTC. Our cyberprofessors are faculty currently teaching the courses at AACC.

Courses targeted for Fall 2009:
- Biology Tutoring Center: BIO 135 / BIO 136 / BIO 232 / BIO 233
- Chemistry Tutoring Center: CHE 111 / CHE 112

Schedules for the chat sessions are available on the OSTC site in ANGEL.

If you have any problems, please contact your instructor.

SOME USEFUL LINKS TO GET YOU STARTED

Quick Link to ANGEL at AACC: http://angel.aacc.edu

ANGEL tutorials: www.aacc.edu/distancelearning/angel

SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW TO ACCESS THE OSTC CHAT SESSIONS

1.	Access ANGEL
	-	http://angel.aacc.edu
	-	Your username is the same username you log onto myaacc with, check out the myaacc login page for more info.
	-	Your password is the first four letters of your last name (lowercase) then the last four digits of your social security number.
	-	This opens your ANGEL home page.
	-	All online courses and groups that you are a member of should be listed on this page, with a lot of other information.

2.	Access the Online Science Tutoring Center
	-	From your ANGEL home page, click on the name of the appropriate tutoring center, either Chemistry or Biology, which is listed under Community Groups.
	-	Now you are on the Group home page.
	-	In the middle of the page you should see a section called About This Section and you might also see Group Announcements or Group Calendar sections.
	-	Across the top, there are several tabs that take you to different areas of this ANGEL group site.

3.	Access the Chat Room
	-	Click on the Communicate tab.
	-	You should see a section called Live Chats.
	-	Click on the name of the appropriate chat to open up the chat room dialog box.
	-	If given the option, click YES for do you want to display both secure and nonsecure information.

4.	Participate in a Chat Session
	-	Once the chat dialog box is open, put your cursor into the rectangular area at the bottom of the dialog box. Type in your message then hit the ENTER key on your keyboard or click the SEND button on the screen.
	-	There will be a list of chat session participants on the right of the screen.
	-	Chat session participants only see messages that were posted after they have arrived. If they leave and come back, they start fresh, and lose any old messages.
	-	When you are ready to leave the chat session, just click the X in the upper right hand corner of the chat session dialog box.

5.	View the Chat Log
	-	Back on the Communicate page, in the Live Chat section, for each chat room there is a button you can click that allows you to VIEW the chat log.
	-	Please note that this same chat room is used over and over again throughout the semester, so the log might become quite long.