Forum
Being able to share our learning with other helps us to progress. So, Cert offers Forums as one of the activities where your class can hold online discussions. Comments can be posted as a part of thread and other file types such as images and media may also be included in Forum posts. Posts can be rated using "Grade" and/or "Rate" features which are available for teachers. Students can also use this feature if permissions are enabled.
Types of Forum
Forums can be set to work differently by the teacher or capable roles.
- Standard forum for general use: It is a default type where students will see an introduction text in a separate space above the list of discussions. Students see a button to start a new discussion (thread).
- Single, simple discussion where there is only one topic and the teacher posts a question and students post replies, but cannot start a new topic.
- Question and Answer forum where teacher posts a question and students respond with possible answers. By default a Q and A forum requires students to post once before viewing other students' postings.
- Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format where the first post of each discussion is displayed so that users can read it and may choose to respond by clicking the "Discuss this topic" button bottom right of the post.
Setting a Forum
- To add a Forum, a teacher should "Turn on editing" and select Forum from the Activity chooser.
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- Then, give the Forum a Name (which students see on the course page) and a description if required. For the Single simple discussion forum type, your description must include the question or topic you wish to discuss.
- In site settings , file sizes to be posted in forums can also be set and if "Display word count" is enabled the number of words in forum posts will be shown at the bottom of each post.
- The forum module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in:
Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Forum
and, for 'Maximum time to edit posts', in:
Administration > Site administration > Security > Site policies.
- Forum subscriptions are also available where participants can choose whether or not to subscribe to a Forum and receive notifications. However, the teacher can choose to force subscription on a particular forum then all course users will be subscribed automatically.
- Other options include RSS feeds, Blocking posts, using "Group mode" for forums, Timed forum posts and changing subject line of Forum notifications.
- Users can set their forum preferences via Preferences in the user menu top right. (Defaults for each of these settings can be set by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Accounts > User default preferences. )
Forum posting
Forum has a "Subject" line which is usually the name of the parent post and could be changed.
- When an image is "attached" as a file to a forum message, it is immediately displayed full size after the message.Images may be dragged and dropped into the box as well as uploading via the "add" link and the File picker.If multimedia filters are enabled, a sound file or accepted video file can be attached, and it will be embedded into the forum post in an appropriate player.
- Tags: Forum posts may be Tagged and Tags can be managed at Site Administrator end. In addition, Tag collection , Standard tags and Disabling tag features are also available.
Other Features
In addition to the highlighted ones discussed above, there are various other features that may be used while Forum posting and usage.
- Moving between Forum Threads.
- Exporting Forum posts to any portfolio which admin has enabled.
- Private Replies for Teachers where Teachers or anyone with the capability can reply privately to a forum message. By default, the reply is only seen by the recipient and the teachers of the course, and cannot be replied.
- Pinned posts.
- Manually locking discussion threads.
- Locking, Splitting and Moving discussions to any other Forum.
- Using groups in Forums as "Visible" or "Separate" groups.
