Moodle offers several options for student-to-student and student-to-teacher interaction. When deciding which social activities to use, consider the level of structure and amount of student-to-student/student-to-teacher interaction you want. For example, chats and wikis offer relatively unstructured environments with lots of opportunities for the student-to-student interaction. These are good ways of relinquishing some control of the class to students. A forum offers more structure because entries are classified on the basis of topics. It can be moderated by the teacher, making it even more structured. A workshop offers the most structure, by virtue of the set assessment criteria that students must use when evaluating each other's work. Note that as activities become more structured, the opportunity for students to get to know one another decreases.

You may want to introduce a chat and/or forum at the beginning of a course to build esprit de corps among students and then move to a...