Some people think of Forums and Chat activities as being interactive but they do not look at the collaborative nature of the activity. In Moodle, the instructor has the opportunity to make all the discussion activities in a place where students can learn to collaborate with each other as they post their papers, read and post in response to their fellow students, and work together in peer reviews of papers and other work.
All interaction in Moodle involves collaboration, at least at a very basic level. So it is, in essence, a focused and purposeful interaction. To be effective, it's important to have an overall goal and measurable outcome for your interaction and/or collaboration. For example, you may say that you'd like to have open office hours in the Chatroom and you can invite students to drop in and chat. But what will they do? Why will they do it? Certainly you may be accomplishing the goal of establishing human connections and forging an emotional...