UB Learning Technologies Support Resources

To add a forum

1. In a topic, click the Add an activity drop-down list and select Forum.
   

General settings

2. In the Forum name field, enter a descriptive name for your forum.
3. From the Forum type drop-down list select the type of forum you are setting up.
4. In the Forum introduction field, enter instructions for your students on using the forum.

   

Important: Students should be directed towards the student guidelines for online forum etiquette, it is a good idea to include a link to this in any forum introduction.

5. In the Subscription mode drop-down list select the subscription type you want. The best option for this is Auto Subscription. This subscription option gives students the option to unsubscribe themselves.
6. In the Maximum attachment size drop-down list select the maximum file size for students file attachments uploaded to the forum.

RSS settings

Unless you expect students to want to get RSS feeds of the forums you should leave these settings as the default. If you do intend to use the RSS feed you should set the settings to control the format of the feed. 

Grade

Using the Grade settings you can choose to grade posts as assignments and have those grades entered in the gradebook. However you will probably find it less time consuming to calculate grades based on an activity report and enter a participation grade into the gradebook by creating an offline activity.

7. If you want to grade posts, choose:
   The Aggregate type, such as Average, or sum, for combining the final grade.
   The grade scale from 1 – 100, or using the Separate and Connected ways of knowing scale ( http://docs.moodle.org/en/Separate_and_Connected_ways_of_knowing ) You can also create your own scale for rating posts. For more information on doing this see: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Scales
   If you want to restrict ratings to posts within a date range, you also need to set the range.

Post threshold for blocking

You can use these settings to restrict your students from posting after a given number of posts.

Common module settings

The most important of the common module settings is the Group settings. This is covered elsewhere.

8. Once you have finished editing the settings, click Save and return to the course, or Save and Display.

For more information and useful tips on setting up forums and fostering participation and a sense of community visit the moodle.org documentation site: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Forum_module#The_News_Forum