Moodle - Forum

What does the Forum activity do?

The forum activity module in Moodle enables participants to have asynchronous discussions i.e. discussions that take place over an extended period of time.

There are several forum types to choose from and participants can subscribe to a forum to receive notifications of new forum posts. A teacher can set the subscription mode to optional, forced or auto, or prevent subscription completely. If required, students can be blocked from posting more than a given number of posts in a given time period; this can prevent individuals from dominating discussions.

Forum posts can be rated by teachers or students (peer evaluation). Ratings can be aggregated to form a final grade which is recorded in the gradebook.

Forums have many uses, such as:

• A social space for students to get to know each other

• For course announcements (using a news forum with forced subscription)

• For discussing course content or reading materials, continuing online an issue raised previously in a face-to-face session

• For teacher-only discussions (using a hidden forum)

• A help centre where tutors and students can give advice

• For extension activities, for example ‘brain teasers’ for students to ponder and suggest solutions to

How to add a Forum in Moodle

Step 1

Before you can make any changes to your Moodle site content, you must first enable editing. To do this, click on the 'Edit mode' button located at the top right of the page.

Step 2

With editing enabled, you will see in each topic the following button:

Step 3

Click the Forum icon from the list to add. You can find more information about forums by clicking "Explore this tool".

Step 4

Add a name for your forum. You can also add an expected time of study and a description here, and choose whether to display the description on the course page (if not, students will see it after clicking on the forum).

Select one of the following five types of forums from the Forum type drop-down box:

• A single simple discussion – a single discussion topic which everyone can reply to. This is the simplest type of forum.

• Each person posts one discussion – each student can post one new discussion topic, which everyone can then reply to.

• Q and A forum – students must first post their perspectives before viewing other students’ posts. Other than this ‘selective release’ functionality, this forum is the same as the Standard forum for general use.

• 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. This is just like the Standard forum for general use except that it is laid out in a blog-like format.

• Standard forum for general use – an open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time. This is the default type and is recommended in most cases.

Step 5

From the Attachments and word count settings you can select the following options:

• Maximum attachment size – students can attach files to a post, and this settings control how large the file size is. The default is enough in most cases, but if students need to be able to attach large files, such as videos, then this setting can be increased to up to 1GB. Attachment of files can also be completely disabled by selecting "Uploads are not allowed".

• Maximum number of attachments – this sets the maximum number of files students can attach per post. The default of 9 is enough in most cases but can be set from 0 to 100.

• Display word count – this toggles whether to show the word count when a student authors a post for the forum.

Step 6 - Subscription and tracking

From the Subscription and tracking settings you can select the following options:

• Subscription mode – this setting allows students to subscribe to a discussion which then means they will be emailed a notification every time someone makes a new post in the discussion. This setting has the following 4 options:

• 1. Optional subscription – students can choose whether to subscribe

  2. Forced subscription – everyone is subscribed and cannot unsubscribe

  3. Auto subscription – everyone is subscribed initially but can choose to unsubscribe at any time

  4. Subscription disabled – subscriptions are not allowed

• Read tracking for this forum? – this setting allows students to see which posts they have read or not. New posts will be highlighted until read. This settings has 3 options:

• 1. Optional – participants can choose whether to turn tracking on or off

  2. On – tracking is always on

  3. Off – tracking is always off

Step 7 - Additional settings

You can adjust an additional range of settings from Discussion locking to lock discussions from a period of inactivity, post blocking, grading, ratings and Common module settings.

The default settings are usually ok for these.

Step 8

When you are finished, click on the 'Save and Display' button to see your forum.

Step 9

You should now see your new forum displayed on the page, which will initially have no posts. Anyone can now create a new discussion topic (or post).

To do this, click on Add a new discussion topic and the following page should appear.

Step 10

You must enter both a Subject for your post and the actual Message content. The Subject is what is displayed on the main forum page, and the Message is shown when your post is clicked on.

The most notable option on this page is the Advanced setting, by default this is disabled. By default, posts will take 30 minutes to appear in forums - to allow for additional editing. Within the advanced menu, you are able to send forum post notifications with no editing-time delay to post immediately, without a delay.

When you have finished, click on Post to forum at the bottom.

Step 11

You should now see your new post in the forum. Click on the discussion title of the post and it will display the full discussion contents.

As you are the owner, you can edit your discussion and/or delete it by clicking on the respective link to the right of the message. Other people can only reply to your discussion.

Your forum is now set up, and ready for students to post.