New Functionality for Moodle E-Learning Platform: Files Communication by Chat Window

Moodle allows communication between students through the chat window, where you can send text messages and emoticons. A study carried out on 45 students identified which method they prefer to use to send attachments—which seems to them to be the most effective and easy to use. The challenges we started with in this implementation of the solution were the non-existence of this way of transmitting files within the Moodle platform and the need to introduce this new method, which has an impact on the communication process that is beneficial to users. When a requirement arises from users such as sending files through the chat window, a feature that does not exist now, the IT administrator has the possibility to create a new method by implementing a plugin that may be imported into the Moodle platform settings. By writing the necessary parameters, arguments, and command lines in the developed plugin, it was possible to create a new way to send files. This paper presents a new solution that contributes the possibility of transmitting files through the chat window, with various extensions such as .pdf, .zip, .docx, .jpg, .xls, .mp4, and other types and sizes of files that can be sent at any time and as many as desired, not limited by the number of uploads related to the transmission.