MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

August 5th, 2011

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 1

What is the Forum Activity in Moodle?

Forums allow students and instructors to communicate with each other within a Moodle course. They are online message boards that can be used to post messages to each other and keep track of individual conversations. Forums are different from using chats since students can take time to think about their responses before posting comments to forums.

Creating a Forum
To create a forum within your course page: 1. Click on the Turn editing on button located in the upper right corner. 2. Go to the week or topic where you wish to place your forum. Click on the Add an activity drop-down menu and select Forums. 3. On the Adding a new forum page, give the forum a descriptive name.

4. Select the forum type you want to use next to Forum Type.

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 2

5. Write a descriptive forum introduction with an openended prompt. Your forum introduction should be written in a way that encourages conversation and dialogue. Do not ask a question that can be answered with a simple yes or no. 6. Select the general options: Force everyone to be subscribed? If you select Yes all users in your course will receive email notifications of new posts to their personal email accounts. No will allow people to choose whether to subscribe. 7. Read tracking for this forum? Read tracking allows users to keep track of posts that have been read and unread. 8. Maximum attachment size: When students attach files to their posts, youll want to limit the max size of their posts so you dont use up all your server space.

9. Select the grade options: Use the drop-down Grade menu to set a point value for the discussion forum. Allow posts to be rated: Forum posts can be rated using either a numerical scale or a scale made up of words. By default, only

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 3

teachers can rate forum posts. If you choose, you can use a role override (done by Moodle Administrators) to allow students to rate each others posts. This is a useful tool for giving students participation grades. Any ratings given in the forum are recorded in the gradebook. Grade: If you allow posts to be rated you can choose a scale rating within the Grade drop-down menu. You can create your own scale or you can pick the default setting Separate and Connected ways of knowing scale, or a number between 1 and 100. The number indicates the total points for the entire forum. Restrict ratings to posts with dates in this range: You can allow only posts within a certain date range to be rated. This is useful if you want to keep students focused on the most recent forum postings. 10. Select the post threshold for blocking options if needed. Students can be blocked from posting a certain number of times in a given period and warned when they are approching the threshold. 11. Select the common module options: Group mode: This is another location in which to set the group mode for the activity. If group mode is forced in the course settings, then this setting will be ignored. Visible: This determines whether students may view the activity or not.

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 4

12. Save your forum once you have completed all of your settings. The forum name will now become a link in the course where you added it. If you need to go back and edit any of the options, you can lick on the hand icon to return to the editing forum page.

By clicking on the hand icon below, you can return to the editing forum page in order to make changes.

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 5

Using Forums
If you click on the name of your forum in the course page, youll see the main forum page below.

To add a comment to a discussion: 1. Click on the Add a new discussion topic button. 2. On the discussion topic page, give your comment a subject. 3. Write your message in the space provided.

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 6

4. In the Subscription field, you can choose to subscribe to the forum if subscriptions were enabled when the forum was created. 5. If you want to attach a file, click the Browse button, search for the file on your computer and click Open. Make sure your document is less than the maximum size limit. 6. You may check the Mail now box to email the post to subscribers immediately. Otherwise, your post wont be mailed until the editing time of 30 minutes has passed. Your Moodle Administrators can change the default time if needed. 7. Click the Post to forum button. 8. After submitting your discussion topic, you will see a screen informing you the post was saved successfully and you have 30 minutes to make changes to your post. The default time is 30 minutes, so most of the time youll have one half hour to go back and edit your post before its mailed to the subscribers. After its been sent, you cant edit it unless you have the privileges set for your role.

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 7

9. By clicking on the discussion name, you will see the post you created with any attachments in the upper-right corner of the message body.

10. If you can still edit the post, you will see an Edit link at the bottom of the message body.

11. Having ratings enabled will display a drop-down menu at the lower right corner of other users posts with the grading scale youve selected. At the bottom of the page below all the posts in the discussion, youll see a button labeled Send in my latest ratings. If you select a rating for a particular post and click the button, your post rating will be submitted and stored in the gradebook.

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 8

12. Once youve submitted a rating, it will appear next to the rating menu. If you click on the rating, youll see everyones ratings for that particular post.

After clicking on the rating link above, a window will appear showing the users name and their post rating.

Archiving Forums
Sometimes your forum threads may get very long and you may want to archive them and open up a new forum with a good summary. Forum discussions can be archived one at a time or by backing up the entire forum with user data, then restoring it. To archive a discussion: 1. Click on the Turn editing on button in the upper right hand corner of your course page. 2. Create a new forum named Archive forum and place it anywhere youd like in your course. Usually the first or last section of your course is a good location. Enter a description in the Forum introduction text box.

IES MOODLE Forum Activity: Adding Forums to Moodle Courses

Page 9

3. After giving your forum a name, scroll to the bottom and Save your forum.

4. Click on the name of the forum you want to archive.

5. After entering the main forum discussion window, click on a forum name to enter the discussion.

6. At the top right corner of the screen you will see a drop-down labeled Move this discussion to. Select Archive forum from the list and click the Move button on the right.

7. Youll now see the discussion in the archive forum. Repeat this step for each discussion if needed. Using an archive forum allows you to keep the discussions manageable and easier to read.