A “Forum” is an overall category that contains one or more “Threads” or sub-topics.
Category: Discussion Board
Step 1: Go to the Discussion Board
Step 2: Click on the “Create Forum” button
Step 3: Name the forum and give it a brief description
Step 4: Make the forum available or unavailable and add date and time restrictions as necessary
Step 5: Choose the appropriate forum settings (see below)
Step 6: Click on the “Submit”
Forum Setting Descriptions
Viewing Threads/Replies:
- The “Standard View” allows users to view all current threads and reply to a current thread or create a new thread.
- “Participants must create a thread in order to view other threads in this forum.” forces users to create a new thread before they can view or reply to any other thread.
Grade
- “No Grading in Forum” does not attach any type of grade to the user’s activity.
- “Grade Discussion Forum” automatically creates a column in the Grade Center associated with this specific forum. When this option is selected, you must give the points possible and have the option to create a due date. In addition, you can select when the Grade Center will notify you to grade a user’s activity (i.e. after 1 post within the forum). This option will also give you the option to attach a rubric.
- “Grade Threads” allows you to grade each user based on their response to each individual thread within one forum. They cannot create threads within the forum, only respond to threads you create. This will create several grades for one forum.
Subscribe
- If you allow users to subscribe to a thread or forum, users will receive an email when there is an additional thread or reply created if they elect to subscribe.
Create and Edit
- You have several options to allow anonymous posts, allow authors to delete or edit their own post, allow users (members) to create new threads, allow file attachments to a thread or response, or allow users to reply with a quote.
- “Force Moderation of Posts” requires you to manually allow each individual thread and/or comment before it can be seen by all users. This may be useful in certain scenarios, but can be very time consuming.
Additional Options
- “Allow Post Tagging” provides users the opportunity to add a tag to each post.
- “Allow Members to Rate Posts” provides users the opportunity to provide a rating for each post (1-5 stars).
Step 1: Go to a content area in which the discussion board or forum should be linked in
Step 2: Click on the “Tools” button
Step 3: Select “Discussion Board”
Step 4: Select either “Link to Discussion Board Page” OR “Select a Discussion Board Forum” and choose the specific forum to link to
Step 5: Click on the “Next” button
Step 6: Add a description for the link (not the discussion itself) if needed
(i.e. “This is the link to the Discussion Board” or “This is the link to the Discussion Forum for this module. Click on the “Create Thread” button once in the forum to find the specific questions and directions.”)
Helpful hint: When looking at the “Discussion Board” page, you can see the number of of posts within the forum (Total Posts), the number of posts you haven’t read (Unread Posts), and the total number of people of participating in the forum (Total Participants).
Step 1: Go into a forum
Step 2: Click on the title of the thread requiring a response OR click on the blue circle with the number of Unread Posts
Step 3: Click on the “Reply” button
Step 4: Type the message
Step 5: Click on the “Submit” button