Forums

Moodle Forums are a great way to allow students to interact with one another as well as with the instructor.

Students can exchange ideas by posting comments and engaging in discussions with classmates.  Students can also respond to ideas posted by the instructor.

Creating a Forum

1. Click the Settings (wheel) icon and click Turn editing on in the upper right corner of your course page.

2. Click one of the Add an activity or resource drop down menus and click Forum.

3. Give the forum a name, description (if desired), and select the forum type (See types of forums for more info.)

 

 

 

4. Determine whether to allow anonymous forum postings

 

 

5. Select subscription mode:

  • OptionalParticipants can choose whether to be subscribed (This should be the default for most)
  • Forced – Everyone is subscribed and cannot unsubscribe
  • Auto – Everyone is subscribed initially but can unsubscribe at any time
  • Disabled – Subscriptions are not allowed.

5. Browse and modify any additional settings as desired.

  • Note possibility to set discussion locking
  • Note possibility to set thresholds for blocking posts
  • Note ability to allow students to rate peer entries

6. Once finished, click Save and return to course.

Using a Discussion Forum

Creating a new topic

1. First, go to the forum by clicking the forum’s name on your course homepage.

2. Add a new topic by click the Add a new discussion topic button below the forum’s description.

3. Give the topic a name in the “Subject” field and type the topic in the “Message” field.

4. Other settings:

  • If desired, you can attach a file or image to the post.
  • If desired, check the “Pinned” checkbox to pin the forum discussion to the top of the forum.
  • A notification is emailed to subscribed users.  (Checking the “Send forum post notification with no editing-time delay” box will immediately send this email notification.)
  • Once finished, click the Post to forum button at the bottom of the page.

5. The discussion thread will be listed.

 

Posting a comment to a topic

1. From within a forum, click on the name of the desired topic.

2. To post a comment, click the Reply link in the topic. You can also reply to other posts. Forums will display posts in nested form by default.

3. Type the comment text in the “Message” field. The reply will automatically be given a subject.

4. Once finished, click the Post to forum button at the bottom of the page.

Grading forum posts

1. Grading in a forum can be enabled by selecting an “Aggregate type” and “Scale Type” in the forum’s settings page.

  

 

Recommended use is “Average of ratings” or “Sum of ratings” for aggregate and “Point” with associated maximum grade value for scale type.

 

 

 

2. When grading is enabled in a forum, instructors and non-editing instructors can use the “Rate” drop down menu in each post of each topic to grade that post.

3. When you have finished giving ratings to posts within a topic, the student’s total grade for the forum will automatically be calculated from the ratings of all his/her posts according to the aggregation in the forum’s settings.