Creating discussion forums

Important: This article is currently under review to align with the December 2023 Moodle upgrade. For further support, contact ltc-central@uow.edu.au.

Text-based discussion has been a staple in online teaching and learning for decades and provides a systematic way to organise communication, conversation, and support in the online learning environment.

Our LMS, Moodle, provides two slightly different types of forum activity: Forum, and Forum – Advanced. In most cases, the Forum - Advanced activity will meet the needs of your discussion task. However, your choice of Forum or Forum – Advanced will depend on the task requirements.

The following comparison of Forum and Forum – Advanced features are taken from the 'Forums' and 'Forums- Advanced' in Moodle Knowledge Base Article.

Why?

Discussion via forums can serve several purposes:

• Discussions are crucial for developing and sustaining community among students
• Forums serve as a kind of classroom space where students and teachers raise ideas, examine concepts, and resolve problems
• Discussion can be focused on course content and its relation and application to real-world events
• Allows students to bring outside information and perspectives to the course and learning space.

(Verenikina, Jones & Delahunty, 2017)

Discussion forums have a number of benefits. The easy adoption and relatively low level of skill required to interact in forums make them a useful inclusion to your subject site. Forums provide clear teacher to student and student to student communication channels that can take place in a single space and can utilise multimedia.

Teaching staff also can facilitate and monitor discussion taking place in a forum, reducing the need to duplicate answers to similar questions from multiple users.

Depending on the discussion task design, use cases for forums include:

• Single forum for whole-cohort discussions (e.g. Announcement, Subject discussions, Assessment)
• Separate forums for tutorial groups using the student groupings in a subject that come across into Moodle from SMP
• Use the Moodle User Groups and Grouping functionality to additionally create different groups of students (i.e. small group, topics teams, skill-based, De Bono’s Thinking Hats).
• A graded activity whereby participation in discussions (via posts and replies) are given a grade or rating by the teacher.

How?

Adding a Forum activity

The following IMTS Knowledge Base Article provides the basic steps for creating a forum activity in Moodle:

Set up a Forum in Moodle

The remainder of this guide will focus on explaining and expanding on various settings and use cases for forums.

Forum Types

When creating a forum, select the Forum type from the adjacent dropdown menu in the General section.

• A single simple discussion – A single discussion topic to which everyone can reply (cannot be used with separate groups). Discussion displays as a single thread on a single page. This type of forum is useful for a short, single-topic or highly focused discussion.
• Each person posts one discussion – Each student can only post one new discussion topic to which everyone can reply. This type of forum is useful for asking students to post a single reflection, and then have other students respond.
• Q and A forum – The initial post in the forum contains a question. Students must reply with their own answer. In the Q and A forum, students must post their reply before they are able to see other students' posts.
• Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format – This forum works like the Standard forum for general use. Only the first post to a new topic displays on the forum page (the most recent topic first, as in a blog). Users click Discuss this topic to view and join in the discussion.
• Standard forum for general use – An open forum where anyone can start a new topic at any time – this is the best general-purpose forum to use.

The Announcement Forum

When you create a new site, the Announcements forum is created by default and placed in the top section of your subject site. Only teachers (by default) or users with appropriate permissions can post in the announcement forum. Students are automatically subscribed to this forum (i.e. they receive notifications of any posts via their UOW student email address) and they cannot unsubscribe.

If you are unsure if a forum is an announcements forum checking the forum type as described above will show a greyed-out ‘Announcement’ type in the dropdown menu.

A site should only contain one Announcement forum. If additional announcement forums exist on the site (due to importing content or copying an existing site), please ensure that additional announcement forums are deleted to prevent issues and confusion among students.

Make a post in a forum

In forums, subject coordinators and teaching staff are able to add and reply to discussion topics (posts). Depending on how the forum is set up, students may be able to post and reply or only reply.

To add a discussion post within a forum (Forum and Forum – Advanced):

1. Click Add a new discussion.
2. Give your discussion an appropriate subject or title and add type your post into the text editor.
3. Attach any files to your post (optional).
4. Click Submit to publish your post to the forum

To reply to a discussion post:

1. Click on the title of the discussion you want to reply to.
2. Click the Reply link.
3. Input your reply in the text field.
4. As a teacher, you can reply privately to a student by checking the Reply privately checkbox.
   
5. Click Post to Forum to post your reply.

Whole forum grading

Like other activities in Moodle, it is possible to assign marks to forum use. To enable grading in a forum:

1. Go to the activity action menu and click Edit settings.
2. In the Whole forum grading section, select the appropriate grade type and input the maximum grade (i.e., weighting).
3. Choose the grading method (Simple direct, Marking guide, Rubric) you’d like to use.
4. Click Save and display.

To grade students within the forum:

1. On the Forum Activity page, click Grade users.
   
2. Use the arrows next to the student's name to cycle through and grade students.
3. View the summary of posts and replies. Add a grade by choosing a score from the Grade dropdown menu
   
4. When finished grading, click Save.

Forum Subscriptions

When a user is subscribed to a forum, they receive an email when there is a new post. Apart from the Announcements forum, subscription to a forum is optional. However, a forum can be set up to force subscription. This can be done in two ways:

1. Updating the forum settings in the Subscription and tracking Choose the appropriate subscription mode from the dropdown menu.
   
2. Changing the mode from the forum. Click the Action button and select the appropriate subscription mode.
   

Forum subscription modes:

• Optional subscription - users can choose whether to be subscribed
• Forced subscription - users are automatically subscribed and cannot unsubscribe themselves. Forced subscription could be used for a news forum, for example, Auto subscription - all enrolled users are subscribed to a forum but can choose to unsubscribe at any time
• Subscription disabled - subscription is not allowed.

Users can choose to subscribe to forums and manually manage subscriptions for each discussion within a forum activity. In the screenshot below, the user is currently subscribed to the first discussion but has unsubscribed the second using the Subscribe toggle:

Users are also able to determine how they receive notifications from their forum subscriptions e.g., every post, daily digest etc.). The following IMTS Knowledge Base Article describes managing forum subscriptions and email notifications: Moodle Forum preferences and Forum Email Digest Types