FORUM

This activity can be the most important Activity - it is here that most discussions take place. Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in a variety of formats, and can include attachments. By subscribing to a forum, participants will receive copies of each new posting in their email. A teacher can impose subscription on everyone.

To add the Forum activity, click on the Add an activity from the drop down menu on any topic/week depending on where you want to place it and select Forum. Adding a new Forum page will open:

General

• Type the name of your Forum in the Forum name field.
• From the Forum Type you can select one of the three available forums:

o A single simple discussion - is a single topic, all on one page. Useful for short, focused discussions.
o Each person posts one discussion - Each person can post exactly one new discussion topic (everyone can reply to them though). This is useful when you want each student to start a discussion about, say, their reflections on the week's topic and everyone else responds to these.
o Standard forum for general use - is an open forum where any one can start a new topic at any time. This is the best general-purpose forum.

• Q and A Forum - it is a forum that requires students to post their perspectives before viewing other students' postings. After the initial posting, students can view and respond to others' postings. This feature allows equal initial posting opportunity among all students, thus encouraging original and independent thinking.
• Type the introduction or any instructions for your student in the Forum Introduction text field. You can use the formatt ing icons to format your text
• Force everyone to be subscribed: When a person is subscribed to a forum it means that s/he will receive emails including copies of every post in that forum (posts are sent 15 minutes after the post was first written). People can usually choose whether or not they want to be subscribed to each forum. However, if you choose to force subscription on a particular forum then all course users will be subscribed automatically, even those who enroll at a later time.

o If you choose the option No, then all current and future course users will not be subscribed. If they want to subscribe then they will have to do it manually.
o If you choose the option Yes, initially then all current and future course users will be subscribed initially but they can unsubscribe themselves at any time.
o If you choose Yes, forever then they will not be able to unsubscribe themselves.
o If you choose Subscriptions not allowed, then all current and future course users cannot subscribe at all.

• Read tracking for this forum: If read tracking for forums is enabled, users can track read and unread messages in forums and discussions. The instructor can choose to force a tracking type on a forum using this setting. There are three choices for this setting:

o Optional [default]: students can turn tracking on or off for the forum to their discretion.
o On: Tracking is always on.
o Off: Tracking is always off.

• Maximum attachment size: Attachments can be limited to a certain file size, from the drop down menu you can specify the maximum limit of the attachment or you can select Uploads are not allowed.

RSS

• RSS feed for this activity: This option allows you to enable RSS feeds in this forum. You can select between two types of feeds: Discussions: generated feeds will include new discussions in the forum with their initial post. Posts: generated feeds will include every new post in the forum.
• Number of RSS recent articles: This option allows you to select the number of articles to include in the RSS Feed. A number between 5 and 20 should be appropriate for most forums. Increase it if the forum is very used.

Grade

• Aggregate type: Forum aggregation defines how all the ratings given to posts in a forum are combined to form the final grade (for each post and for the whole forum activity).

Choose from the following aggregation methods:

• Average (default): The mean of all the ratings given to posts in that forum. This is especially useful with peer grading when there are a lot of ratings being made.
• Count: The number of rated posts becomes the final grade. This is useful when the number of posts is important. Note that the total can not exceed the maximum grade allowed for the forum.
• Max: The highest rating is returned as the final grade. This method is useful for emphasising the best work from participants, allowing them to post one high-quality post as well as a number of more casual responses to others.
• Min: The smallest rating is returned as the final grade. This method promotes a culture of high quality for all posts.
• Sum: All the ratings for a particular user are added together. Note that the total is not allowed to exceed the maximum grade for the forum.

• Grade: the maximum grade of the postings, you can select descriptive scale Deficient/Regular/Excellent.
• You can restrict rating for this forum by checking the box beside Restrict ratings to posts with dates in this range and specify From and To day, month, year and time from the drop down menu.

Post threshold for blocking

• Time period for blocking : this period is related to the field before. Students can post or reply number of messages during a selected period. This period can be one day, 2 days or even a week. After this period the counter will reset to let students
• Post threshold for blocking : instructors can set the maximum number of postings and replies students can post in forums. When reaching this number students will be blocked from posting new message or even replying to existing ones after reaching the number of messages in this field
• Post threshold for warning : A message “You are approaching the posting threshold” will warns the student after reaching the number of postings in this field.

Note : Setting either the warn threshold to 0 will disable warnings, and setting the block threshold to 0 will disable blocking. If blocking is disabled, warnings will automatically be disabled.

None of these settings affect teachers posting, they affect only students.

Common module settings

• If you’re not using groups in your course keep the No groups option as the default one in the Group mode drop down menu. If you are using groups, you have two options:

o Separate groups - each group can only see their own group, others are invisible

o Visible groups - each group works in their own group, but can also see other groups

• To hide the Forum activity from your students select Hide from the Visible to students drop down menu otherwise keep Show selected.
• ID Number: Setting an ID number provides a way of identifying the activity for grade calculation purposes. If the activity is not included in any grade calculation then the ID number field can be left blank.
• Grade Category: you will only have one category if you did not create categories yet.
• Click on Save and display button to create the Forum activity.

The Roles and how they affect the use of forums

Remember, in previous versions of Moodle, you had an option in the forum settings: Can a student post to this forum. You used to select one of the following options which are related to the type of access for the users in the Forum.

• Discussions and replies are allowed: a user can post a new topic and reply to any existing one.
• No discussions, but replies are allowed: a user can not post a new topic but reply to all existing ones.
• No discussions, no replies: a user can not post a new topic or reply. It serves as a news forum.

Now, in this new version (1.9), you don’t have this option anymore. In order to decide what students can do in your forum, you need to click again “Update this forum”.

You see 3 tabs “Settings”, “Locally assigned roles” and “Override Permissions”

Click on “Override Permissions” and then click on “Student”. Here, you have a list of settings that define what your students can do in THIS current forum (this is called the “current context”). You can override any setting by changing the default “inherit” to “allow”, if you want to allow more privileges in this forum.

For topics and replies, imagine these 2 scenarios:

Example 1 : You decided that your students should NOT be able to create new discussion topics. In that case, select the “Prevent” button of the setting: “Start new discussions”.

Example 2 : You decided that your students should NOT be able to reply to posts. In that case, select the “Prevent” button of the setting “Reply to posts”.

For rates, you can have this scenario:

Example 3 : You want to allow your students to view the rates put by their colleagues on their own posts and be able also to rate others’ posts. In the list of settings of the student role, select “Allow” for both “View ratings” and “Rate posts”.