Add a Chat Activity in Moodle

The Chat activity allows course members to hold real-time, text-based conversations with other course members. Different chat rooms can be set up for the same course. For example, a course may have multiple Chats, some where meeting times are scheduled, and others that are always available. Chat sessions can also be logged for reference, with instructor control over who can see the logs.

Set up a Chat Room

1. On your course page, click Turn editing on (top right). Editing icons and links will appear.
2. Locate the Topic or Weekly Section in which you would like to add a Chat activity.  (If you are using the Collapsed topics format, open the Section.)
3. At the bottom-right of the Section, click + Add an activity or resource. The Activity chooser will open.
4. In the Activity chooser Activities are listed above Resources, select Chat. A description will be displayed at right.
5. Click Add. The Chat Settings screen will open.
6. On the Chat Settings screen, under General,  provide an informative Name for the chat room. For example, if you will be using your chat room for online office hours, then you might name it “Office Hours - Weds. 3-4 pm.”
7. Provide a Description that lets your students know the purpose of the Chat, and your expectations for their participation.
   • For a structured discussion, you could include a specific list of questions you would like addressed.
   • This is also a good place to let your students know whether or not you plan to make the archive of chat logs available to the entire class.
8. (optional) Next chat time sets a specific date and hour for students to meet. Once you set a meeting time, you will have the option to Repeat sessions to be daily or weekly. You can also come back and update the date or time.
   Note: Setting a date and time will not restrict access to the room at other times; it will add the Chat to the course Calendar and let your students know when they can expect to find others in the chat room.
9. Save past sessions lets you determine how long chat logs will be deleted from the archive. By default, this is set to Never delete messages and logs are preserved.
10. To allow students to view chat logs, set Everyone can view past sessions, to Yes. This will allow everyone in the course to review the text entered into the chat stream (whether or not they attended a session). When set to No (default), only instructors and TAs will have access to the logs for the chat room.
11. Under Common module settings you can assign groups to the activity.  (For more on working with groups, see Moodle Groups Overview.)
12. The Restrict access area lets you set conditions for accessing the Chat activity, either by date or by prerequisite.
    Note: During periods when access is restricted, the activity is completely hidden from students, on the course page, and in the course Calendar.
13. Click Save and return to course, or, to open the chat room directly, click Save and display.

View, Delete or Download Chat Logs

Instructors (and students, if the instructor allows) can view logs of previous sessions in a Chat activity. Instructors can also download individual sessions or export all sessions from a chat at once, and delete logs.

1. Open the Chat activity. The Chat page opens, showing the description and a list of links.
2. Click View past chat sessions. The Chat sessions page opens showing a list of sessions and participants with a count of how many messages each participant sent. The sessions are listed in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent session at the top of the list.
3. To view a log of a particular session
   1. Click the See this session for the session (at right). A log will open showing the exchange of messages between participants.
   2. To download the session log to your computer, click Export to portfolio.(See details in next step)
   3. To return to the Chat sessions page, click Continue.
4. To download a session log:
   1. Click the Export to portfolio link for the session. The Downloading screen opens and the session is downloaded to your computer as an HTML page.
   Note: Look for the file where your browser typically saves downloads. It will be named "Chat name-session.html." You can view the .html file in a browser or open it in a word processing application such as MS Word.
   2. To return to the previous page, click Return to where you were.
5. To delete a session log:
   1. For a session listed on the Chat sessions page, click Delete this session. The session log will open with a confirmation box at the top of the page.
   2. To confirm that you are deleting the correct session. Click Continue to delete the log.  You will be returned to the Chat sessions page.
6. To export all the sessions of a chat:
   At the bottom of the page, click Export all to portfolio. The Downloading screen opens and the session is downloaded to your computer as an HTML page.
   Note: Look for the file where your browser typically saves downloads. It will be named "Chat name-session.html." You can view the .html file in a browser or open it in a word processing application such as MS Word.
   2. To return to the previous page, click Return to where you were.