Live Chat activities can be useful for short working sessions, labs, or collaborative real-time activities in Moodle. It can also be used as office hours for participants to submit questions to the faculty member of the course. There are minimal functions available in the Live Chat - only text can be sent back and forth.
See the Moodle documentation for Using Chat for additional information.
Google Chat, Google Meet, or Zoom may be alternatives in a scenario where more complex processes are required.
Create a Live Chat
Turning on editing for the course and click on Add an activity or resource.
In the Add an activity or resource window, click on the Activities tab and select Chat.
Add a name for the chat.
To create a chat room that participants can join ad-hoc, settings can be left as-is.
- Save past sessions: Set the option to Never delete messages in order to save all past chat sessions. If past chat sessions aren't needed, adjust the time amount in the dropdown.
- Everyone can view past sessions: Yes will cache the sessions and all chats will be visible when users log into the chat each time, No will reset the chat messages everyone time users log in.
Click on the Save and return to course.
Viewing the Chat
To join the session, click on the Chat icon on the Moodle page.
After the next window opens, select Click here to enter the chat now.
The chat window will open and start the session. Participants will show up in the right-side panel and a time stamp will appear in the window as users join the activity.
