Course Management 

Chat Module 

The Chat module allows participants to have a real time synchronous discussion via the 

web. This is a useful way to get a different understanding of each other and the topic 

being discussed   the mode of using a chat room is quite different from the asynchronous 

Forums. The Chat module contains a number of features for managing and reviewing chat 

discussions.  

Setup properties include the ability to establish a Chat session date/time (displayed on 

course calendar), schedule repeating chat sessions, a period for saving past chat 

sessions for students to review and whether or not these past sessions can be viewed. 

Choice Module 

A choice activity is very simple   the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of 

multiple responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to 

allow the class to vote on a direction for the course; or to gather research feedback.               

The Choice properties window allows you to select whether results from the actitivy are 

published for participants to view (anonymously or known) and whether a participant can 

modify their original selection. You can also set whether the results page will display a 

column showing unanswered participants.  

Dialogue Module 

(non standard) 

This module provides a simple communication method between pairs of users. A teacher 

can open an dialogue with a student, a student can open a dialogue with a teacher, and 

(optionally) a student can open a dialogue with another student. A teacher or student can 

be involved in many on going dialogues at any time. If you were a teacher, you might think 

of this as an after school personal meeting. If you were a mentor, this could be a one to 

one session. Students can use a dialogue to help each other in a private manner. 

Setup properties allow you to select whether a dialogue is deleted a certain number of 

days after it has been closed, the type of dialogue instance being created (i.e., teacher to 

student, student to student or everybody) whether more than one dialogue per person is 

permitted and whether Moodle will automatically send out an e mail notifying each party 

that a comment has been added to the dialogue.  

Forum Module

This activity can be most important in terms of helping learners construct new knowledge   

it is here that discussion among participants and teachers takes place. Forums can be 

structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can 

be viewed in a variety for formats, and can include attachments. By subscribing to a 

forum, participants will receive copies of each new posting in their email. A teacher can 

impose subscription on everyone if they want to.  

Forum setup properties include: 

     How students are allowed to post to a forum 

     Whether subscription is forced 

     Maximum size of attachment upload 

     Whether posts can be rated and by whom, the type of rating scale used and how 

students can view these ratings, and a time period in which ratings can be applied. 

Participants can choose how they wish to receive forum posts  

and other e mail that Moodle sends out, by changing their 

 Edit profile  preferences (e.g. single message for each post 

made, daily digest of all messages etc.)  

http://moodle.org 

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