The Forum activity enables participants to have asynchronous discussions, i.e., discussions that take place over an extended period of time. There are several forum types to choose from. A teacher can allow files to be attached to forum posts if desired. Attached images are displayed directly in the forum post.
Subscriptions
Participants can subscribe to a forum to receive notifications of new forum posts. A teacher can set the subscription mode to optional, forced or auto, or prevent subscription completely. If enabled, students can be blocked from posting more than a given number of posts in a given time period; this can prevent individuals from dominating discussions.
Grading
Forums by default are not graded, but grading can be enabled in the forum settings. Forum posts are either graded manually by the teacher or using a rating system. Forum posts can be rated by teachers or students (peer evaluation). Ratings can be aggregated to form a final grade which is recorded in the grade book.
Forum Settings
When creating your forum, you have the ability to enable additional features. By default, the majority of the features below will be turned off. You can turn them on in the forum settings menu. Visit the Instructional Technology Forum page to learn more about setting up a forum and the types of forums.
Post Options
When you create a forum, you have the option to turn on the features below:
- Allow marking as substantive- You can give students with exemplary responses a star.
- Allow post bookmarking - Allows participants to "save" responses or posts.
- Allow private replies - You as an instructor can send a private response to a student.
- Allow anonymous posting- Students can post to the forum anonymously.
- Display word count- Informs students of their word count. This useful if you are requiring posts to be a certain length.