Overview
The Chat tool is a text-based discussion tool. This page tells you how to set up a Chat activity and how to participate in a chat session.
Â
When to use
Use the Chat tool when you want to have real-time, synchronous text-based discussion with your students in an online chat room.
For audio chat, see the Voice Thread page.
Benefits
The Chat tool allows you to text-chat with your students in an online chat room. Discussion, brainstorming, group work and questioning are all teaching strategies that can be enhanced using Chat.
Guide
Step by step instructions
Create a Chat activity
- On the course home page, click Turn editing on
, and in the relevant section, click Add an activity or resource, select Chat from the pop-up menu.
- On the Adding a new Chat page, click Expand all, then in the General section enter the Name of this chat room and some Description text.
- Under Chat sessions:
- At Next chat time, enter the day, month, year, hour and minute of the first chat session.
- At Repeat/publish session times, select how you want the chat time(s) to display.
- Select the period for which you want to Save past sessions.
- Select whether Everyone can view past sessions.
- Complete the remaining page sessions as necessary and click Save and return to course.
Participate in a Chat session
- On the course home page, click the chat session link.
- On the chat home page, click one of the two links that will admit you to the chat room.
- To post a message to the chat session, type it in the field at the bottom of the screen and click Send. The message displays in the chat window.
Additional information
Further assistance
If you experience technical or other issues, consult the Where to get help page.