Moodle

Chat Tool

The Chat Tool lets you “talk” in real time to your classmates and to students in other courses. When you click on the Chat Tool icon, you will see something like this:

The first thing you will notice is that there are six chat rooms. The first four chat rooms have specific purposes designated by your instructor. The General Chat for your course is used for general chat with all students in the course. The General Chat for All Courses lets you talk to students in other courses.

Note that conversations in the first four chat rooms are recorded. So even if you miss a chat session, you may still read the transcripts for the chat (ask your instructor to make the chat logs available as a single page). Conversations are not recorded in either of the General Chat rooms, which tend to be for less formal types of chat.

To enter a chat room, simply click on the button for that particular room. When you do so, a new window will appear that looks like this:

The window is pretty self-explanatory. Conversation occurs within the Conversation Text Box and people who are in the chat room are listed under Current Users. If you want to hear a sound when new users come into the chat room, you can check the box marked Entry Chime. You can also send URLs (web page addresses) to other users using the Send URL function.

To post a message, click inside the white rectangle below Type your message below... and type your message. Press ENTER on your keyboard to post the message. If you screw up, don't worry. Just type it again.