Adding Course Activities

Adding a Forum Activity

A Forum is an activity in Moodle that allows students to interact and discuss topics within a course. Students posts can include text, images, attachments and even video and audio recordings.

Users can set up discussion forums in a number of formats, depending upon how you wish to enable communication:

- - Standard forum for general use - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time (Default format)
  - A single simple discussion - A single discussion topic to which everyone can reply (cannot be used with separate groups)
  - Each person posts one discussion - Each student can post exactly one new discussion topic, to which everyone can then reply
  - Q and A forum - Students must first post their perspectives before viewing other students' posts
  - Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time, and in which discussion topics are displayed on one page with "Discuss this topic" links

Note: Each course automatically includes a Course Announcements Forum generated with it; this is a place for instructors to leaves messages and notices for students. Posting a message Course Announcements will automatically generate an email notification to all students enrolled in a course. Students cannot reply to any messages posted in this Forum.

Once the Forum has been created in your course, you may want to review some of the related functionality;

Adding an Forum

Step 1: Switch to edit mode.

Step 2: Locate the topic section (or week) in which the content will be located and click +Add an activity or resource.

Step 3: In the pop-up menu, scroll down through the many activity choices to the Resources area and select the Forum activity.

Step 4: Fill in the appropriate Forum information.

a.Enter a title in the Forum name field.

b. Enter directions for the discussion in the Description field. Including explicit instructions in this field can provide helpful guidance for students, including dates and deadlines for posting original thoughts and replies to other students.

c. Click the check box if you wish the description to display on the front of the course. If left unchecked, the description will display after they click into the resource.

d. If desired, click the Forum type field and select an alternate forum type from the drop-down menu. Ex. Q & A forum.

Note: Clicking the blue Question mark (?) icon displays an explanation of the different forum types.

Step 5: Discussion forums by default are worth no point value in your grade book. We strongly suggest changing the default grade setting to make the discussion forum worth point value.

5a: Click on Whole forum grading to open the menu.

5b: Change the Grade Type to Point.

5c: Adjust the Maximum Grade to reflect the number of points you think the forum should be worth.

Step 6: Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save and return to course when finished.

Step 7: Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save and return to course when finished.

Creating a New Post

Step 1: Click the forum link on your course page.

Step 2: Once in the forum, click the Add a new discussion topic button.

Step 3:

a. Under add your discussion, enter the subject in the Subject field.

b. Enter the discussion text in the Message field.

c. Click Post to when finished.

Note: Files can be attached to the post by clicking Advanced.

Step 6: To view replies or edit the post, click on the forum subject line of the desired discussion.