Chat

From Totara:

The chat activity module enables participants to have text-based, real-time synchronous discussions.

The chat may be a one-time activity or it may be repeated at the same time each day or each week. Chat sessions are saved and can be made available for everyone to view or restricted to users with the capability to view chat session logs.

Chats are especially useful when the group chatting is not able to meet face-to-face, such as:

Regular meetings of students participating in online courses to enable them to share experiences with others in the same course but in a different location

A student temporarily unable to attend in person chatting with their teacher to catch up with work

Students out on work experience getting together to discuss their experiences with each other and their teacher

A question and answer session with an invited speaker in a different location

Sessions to help students prepare for tests where the teacher, or other students, would pose sample questions

“Chat” rooms are exclusively for synchronous courses. This activity, along with any other interactive social activity, will need to be monitored and maintained. This means that a trainer and (preferably) a SME need to be given permission to monitor, moderate, and lead discussions and provide structure to the content.

When using this feature, there is an option to save chat logs. This is required for us as it is a digital communication we are responsible for and we will need to maintain these as records for both future students and for our own protection as to the content of the course.