Moodle Help Guide
Forums
When to use it: For asynchronous discussion.
How to use it:
- Please do give your students prompts that encourage them to reflect, question, discuss, do further research, and collaborate with each other. The success of a forum activity is directly correlated with instructor engagement and investment.
- Using the default forum type (Standard Forum) should be good to get you started. We recommend getting familiar with that before delving into other forum types, unless you have a learning goal that demands further specificity. Please don't hesitate to consult with the EdTech team on the most useful forum type for your desired course activity.
How to Add a Forum
- Turn editing on.
- Add activity or resource at bottom of a section OR hover between existing activities and you will see a plus sign (+) appear in the middle of the screen. Click on that to add a resource or activity.
- Select "Forum" and click "Add".
- Give the Forum a name. It should be something descriptive- what is the discussion about?
- Optionally, include due date information in the title.
- Choose a forum type. For most purposes, a standard forum is fine. See below for more info on the different forum types and uses.
- Add your forum prompt.
- This is the instructions for the forum. What do you want to students to write about? How many times should they post? Are they required to respond to their peers? Do you want them to add links, media, or file attachments to their posts? When do you expect them to post by? How does it fit into other elements of the course?
- Choose a subscription option.
- Click save and return to course at the bottom.
- You'll see the link to your forum on the main course page.
- Start a new discussion topic, or leave it to the students to start theirs.
Forum Types and General Uses
Standard forum for general use: The most generally useful forum type. Anyone can start new discussion topics, or respond to an existing one.
Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format: Same as above, except on the first page of the forum you will see the full text of the first post in each discussion.
A single simple discussion: Instead of multiple discussion topics (aka threads) within a forum, this only has one. Each person posts by responding to someone else's post.
Each person posts one discussion: Each person starts their own discussion topic, and then others can respond to it.
Q and A forum: The instructor begins this forum by posting a question. The students reply back and answer the question, but they cannot see anyone else's response until after they have posted themselves.
Individual (Journal) or Small Group Forums
If you wish to use the Forum tool to facilitate individual or small group communication, such as for a student journaling activity or a small group project, you can use a Standard Forum (as noted above) to enable this.
You will need to repeat the steps below for each individual student, or each small group, so be sure to give each new forum that you create a name that will identify who will be working in it.
Start by creating a new Standard Forum. At the bottom of the page for Add a Forum, there is a tab to 'Restrict Access'. Click on this option to open up more options.
Restricting Access to a Single Student
Clicking on 'Restrict Access' will open up this dialogue box. Click on User Profile. This will allow you to restrict access to a single student.
Clicking on 'User Profile' will lead you to this set of options. Make sure that 'Email address' is selected under 'User Profile Field' and that the second field is 'contains', NOT 'equal to'. In the third space, you may enter the student's email username and click 'Save and return to course'.
Please note that this method requires that you make a Forum for each student.
Restricting Access to a Group
Another extremely helpful document to consult when setting up a forum using groupings is Using Groups with Moodle Forums. It offers a clear explanation of how the Common module setting options of "Separate Groups" vs "Visible Groups" affect the use of Moodle forums so you can choose the option that will work best for your purposes.
Forum Subscription Options
For more on managing forum subscription options and what email you and your students receive from your course Forums, please check out the video above or visit MoodleDocs' Forum page.