Foster information exchange and online community engagement
The Forum activity enables students to post and reply to comments, suggestions, and questions asynchronously. A forum is an area where participants discuss a topic or a group of related topics. Within each forum, participants can create many discussion topics. A discussion topic includes the initial post and all replies to it.
There are several forum types:
A single simple discussion - A single discussion topic where everyone can reply.
Each person posts one discussion - Each student can post exactly one new discussion topic, where everyone can reply.
Q and A forum - Students must first post their perspectives before they can view other students' posts.
Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time, where the discussion topics are displayed on one page with Discuss this topic links.
Standard forum for general use - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time.
What is the difference between Open Forums and Core Forums?
The Open forum activity provides some unique benefits over the basic Moodle forum activity.
- Easy forum grading: You can grade student posts using Open Grader. You can also use advanced grading methods in Open forum activities.
- Allow anonymous forums: Let your students make anonymous posts to a discussion forum. They can still receive credit for posting.
- View posting details: View the number of posts and replies a student has made. You can also view the content of those posts. It doesn't matter if the forum is anonymous or not.
- Enjoy simplified forum subscription: Receive emails related to just one topic in a forum. You don't have to subscribe to the entire forum.
- Highlight teacher posts: Make your posts stand out from student posts. This makes it easier for students to notice the posts that may be more relevant for them to read.
- Mark forum posts: Identify posts that need review and have had an impact on the reader or the forum in general.
- Send a private reply: Send a private reply to a forum post. Private replies are only see by the original post author. Students know a reply is private when they can't reply to it.
