Our Moodle site offers three options for communicating with participants in a class:

• Announcements. Forum/email option — only Teachers can post; participants receive via email and/or on-site message (depending on their notification settings), and post is archived on forum where all Participants can access.
• Quickmail. E-mail option — only visible to Teachers; teachers can see history of messages they’ve sent, but no archive is available for Student participants.
• Messaging. Instant messaging/e-mail option — Everyone on Moodle can use Messaging to contact other Moodle users via real-time chat (if they are online) or message (if they are offline). Offline users are notified of Messages when they log in, and can opt in to receiving Messages via email.

To view and send Messages, click on your name in the upper right and choose Messages from the drop-down menu. To control how you receive e-mail, post and message notifications, choose Preferences from this menu and edit Notification preferences and Message preferences.

See the below comparison chart for a quick overview and check out the video link to learn more about Messaging in Moodle.

Video: Messaging Improvements