Sometimes it is helpful to have synchronous or real-time communication. We often use our smartphones for texting when we need a quick answer or want to ask a rather informal question. The Chat module in Moodle is similar. In certain ways, the Chat module is a bit redundant, because students may be already chatting with each other via social media such as Google Hangouts or Skype. However, the good thing about using the Chat module is that it is a bona fide Moodle product, and it is possible to save the chat conversations within Moodle. Saving the transcripts of chats can be very important for instructors who want to ensure that they are communicating, and also for students who may wish to keep a record of what they have said.

Another advantage of chat is that your students may use speech-to-text applications (Dragon or Google), which automatically inserts a microphone avatar or logo. It is a good way to have students practice speech-to-text, and also can be very helpful for those students who may have limited vision or limited mobility with their hands or fingers.

A chat room can be useful for students who are in a group. However, it’s not necessarily a good idea to have a chat with the entire class, because threads can get lost fairly quickly if people are commenting at the same time.

When you add a chat room to a course, by default, any student in the course can enter this chat room at any time. As with other activities, access restrictions can be set to override this default. The Course Chat Room can become a meeting place for students in the course, where they can come to collaborate on work and exchange information. If you give group assignments or have students rate other students' assignments, consider adding a chat room to the course and encouraging students to use it. Also, consider saving transcripts of the chat sessions so that they can act as another reference tool for students.

When you schedule a chat session, the scheduled time appears on Course Calendar and is also displayed in the Upcoming events block:

As the chat module is open all the time, when you put a chat on the calendar, you are not restricting access to the chat module. You are just creating a reminder to inform students when they should click on the chat module.

If a group of more than five or six wants to communicate, it’s usually much better to use a discussion board rather than chat. That said, if you are launching a webinar, it is always good to have chat available in order to send questions, comments, and to alert the instructor if there are technical difficulties. BigBlueButton and Skype have chat built in so that people can communicate via chat as they also converse with each other via video or pure audio.

When a student selects a chat, they see the Description that you entered when you created the chat. You can use this Description to instruct the student about the purpose of the chat:

When you enter a chat, it launches a pop-up window. You can choose between two themes: Bubble or Compact; I've selected Bubble. Ensure that your students don't have popups blocked:

Let's look at the settings that you use to create a chat.