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Chat Tool

This tool will be discontinued by D2L in January 2024.

The Chat tool is a real-time, text-based collaboration tool. You can use the Chat tool to brainstorm ideas, hold a question and answer period, have a debate or discussion, or organize a remote study group. As opposed to other collaboration tools, such as Discussions, Chat conversations occur in real-time.

Accessing Chat

Chat rooms are grouped as General (course) chats or Personal chats. You can only access General chats from the appropriate course. You can access Personal chats from anywhere in Learning Environment.

Do one of the following:

    • Click Chat inside the More section on the navbar.
    • Click Edit Course on the navbar, click Chat from the Communication section on the Course Administration page.

Using Chat

Add a chat message

Type a message in the text box at the bottom of the chat room, and press Enter on your keyboard or click Send.

Refresh your chat window

If you think new messages are not appearing on your screen fast enough, click Refresh at the top of the chat. This option appears when you select New Messages in Settings.

See who else is chatting

The Participants pane displays a list of users currently signed in to a chat room.

Changing your chat settings

    1. Do one of the following:
      • On the Chat List page, click Settings.
      • Inside a chat, click  Settings.
    2. Enter a new alias in the Alias field. Depending on your permissions, you can change your alias, or chat name, if you want to appear as a different name, such as a nickname, to other chat participants.
    3. Select the check boxes for Bold or Italics.
    4. Set an Alias Color.
    5. If you want to change the message order, select New to Old or Old to New. If you want to see new messages only, select New Messages. This requires you to manually refresh the screen, to see new messages and remove all old ones. Note You can change back to see all messages, which restores all messages for that session, even if they were not visible while New Messages was selected.
    6. You can change your sound settings so you can hear a sound when someone enters the chat, leaves the chat, or when there is an incoming message. Select a sound from the following drop-down lists:
      • Incoming Message Sound
      • Person Enters Chat Sound
      • Person Leaves Chat Sound
    7. Click Save.