Adding and Using Forums in Moodle

What types of forums are available?

By default, every course in Moodle already has an Announcements Forum. You can also add extra forums to your class to help students participate and talk to each other.

The Announcements Forum is a special space made automatically for important news. Everyone in the class is forced to sign up for it, which means Moodle will automatically email every message you post to all of your students. A great benefit of this is that if a student joins your class late, they can easily log in and read all the old announcements they missed.

When you create any other new forum, you must choose one of five different styles. The two most popular choices are the Standard forum for general use and the Q and A (Question and Answer) forum.

  • A single simple discussion – This is a short, focused conversation that stays on a single page. The teacher posts one question, and students can only reply to that specific post.
  • Each person posts one discussion – Each person can start exactly one new conversation topic, but everyone is allowed to reply to them. This is helpful if you want every student to share their own thoughts about the week’s lesson, and then have the rest of the class respond to those ideas.
  • Q and A Forum – This is best used for posting a particular question that you wish to have answered.  The teacher posts a question, and students respond with possible answers. Students are unable to see other students’ postings until they post a response. Note: the teacher must make a post before students are able to post anything.
  • Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format – This works like a standard forum for general use, but the first post of each discussion is displayed so that users can choose to respond with the “Discuss this topic” button.
  • Standard forum for general use – An open forum where anyone can start a new topic at any time; this is the best general-purpose forum.

Using Forums

How do I add a forum?

  1. Select the “Edit Mode” toggle in the upper right to begin editing the course site.
  2. Choose the section where you want to add the assignment and click Add an activity or resource.
  3. Select Forum activity from the Activity Chooser.
  4. Provide a Forum name, a Description, and set the Forum type. There are other options, such as allowing students to post anonymously, as well as set Ratings.
  5. Click the [Save and return to course] button.

How do I pin discussion topics?

To “pin” a discussion topic to the top of your forum:

You can select “Pinned” when creating a new discussion thread by clicking Advanced and checking the [Pinned] checkbox.

 

Click "Pinned" to pin a topic to the top of a forum.

Or you can select an existing discussion topic and select Pin this discussion under the three vertical dots (ellipsis menu) on the Forum activity page

Pin a discussion in a forum with the "..." button

Or by opening up the discussion topic and selecting Pin this discussion under the Settings menu.

Pin a discussion in a forum using the Settings menu in the discussion topic.

Faculty and students are also able to “Star” discussions in the same locations or by clicking the star to the left of the discussion name. This acts as a personal version of “Pinned discussions,” placing them at the top of the person’s list of discussion topics for that forum.

How to I can I subscribe to a forum?

When a participant is subscribed to a forum, it means they will receive email copies of forum posts. Under “Subscription Mode,” there are 4 subscription mode options you can choose from:

  • Optional subscription – Participants can choose whether to be subscribed.
  • Forced subscription – Everyone is subscribed and cannot unsubscribe.
  • Auto subscription – Everyone is subscribed initially but can choose to unsubscribe at any time.
  • Subscription disabled – Subscriptions are not allowed.

How can I grade a forum?

Whole forum grading is a new feature that allows the instructor to view and grade the entirety of a student’s forum postings on a single, intuitive page. To set it up:

Add Grading to the Forum

  1. Add a forum and expand the “Whole forum grading” option
    Whole forum grading section in the activity settings for Moodle forum
  2. Choose either point or scale grading and set additional grading settings as desired

Grading the Forum

  1. Once students have submitted their forum posts, you can choose the [Grade users] button to grade all the posts and replies for a single student
    "grade users" button within the discussion forum in moodle
  2. On the next page, you will see a single student’s entire collection of posts (including replies to other students) on the left side of the screen
  3. The grader panel can be hidden and expanded using the buttons located at the top right of the screen
    Black circle around buttons to hide and reveal grader panel
  4. Use the arrows to navigate to the next student’s posts
  5. Click [Save] to save the grade or [Close] to return to the main forum page.

How do I get a report of forum activity?

Located in the Gear icon drop-down list, the forum summary report allows the instructor to see a report of all student activity on a forum. You can also export a file (.csv, .xlsx, .pdf, etc) of all students’ posts and replies for that given forum.

What are some other forum features?

Reply Privately

When replying to discussion posts, there is the option to reply privately to the post’s author.

Set post reply to private.

Lock Discussion

Faculty are able to lock discussions to prevent further posts and replies. This can be done under the vertical ellipsis button on the main Forum page or under the Settings menu within the discussion post itself.

Post Sort-order

When viewing the list of discussion topics in a forum, one can sort the list in the following ways:

  • Newest discussions at the top of the list
  • Oldest discussions at the top of the list
  • Sort by most replies
  • Regardless of sort order, pinned discussions will be at the top of the list
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