{"id":208,"date":"2017-05-25T03:48:22","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T03:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/?page_id=208"},"modified":"2023-01-16T14:19:10","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T01:19:10","slug":"forums","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/communicating-with-students\/forums\/","title":{"rendered":"Forums"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Summary<\/h2>\n<p>A forum\u00a0is where asynchronous communication takes place between all members of a class \u2013 teaching staff and students. You can limit access to certain users and groups.\u00a0A forum is made up of a series of discussion topics and replies.<\/p>\n<h3>Resources<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.moodle.org\/401\/en\/Forum_activity\">Using Forums<\/a> (Moodle.org)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/files\/2020\/04\/2020330_ELMForum.pdf\">ELM Q+A Forum Tip Sheet<\/a>\u00a0(pdf)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Creating a forum<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>Login to Moodle and navigate to the course you want to add a forum to.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure editing is turned on\u00a0<em>(<\/em><em>Turn editing<\/em>\u00a0<em>on<\/em> &#8211; toggle icon in the top right hand corner).<\/li>\n<li>Go to the section where you want the forum to appear and click<em> Add an activity or resource<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Select\u00a0<em>Forum<\/em> and click\u00a0<em>Add<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Fill in the resulting form &#8211; make sure you give the forum a name.\n<ol>\n<li>Subscription and tracking &#8211; make sure you select\u00a0<em>Auto subscription<\/em> for the\u00a0<em>Subscription mode<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Restrict Access &#8211; here you can set if a forum should only be available to certain groups of students or at certain times.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>Click\u00a0<em>Save and return to course<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Creating a new topic<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>Open your forum and select a group (if the forum is set up to handle groups) and click\u00a0<em>Add a new topic<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Give your topic a subject (make this clear for ease of searching at a later date) and type the contents of your topic into the message.<\/li>\n<li>If you need more advanced features like attaching files or pinning the topic to the top of the forum click <em>Advanced\u00a0<\/em>there you can:\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Add attachments<\/strong> &#8211; add these in the\u00a0<em>Attachment\u00a0<\/em>section<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pin your post<\/strong> &#8211; select\u00a0<em>Pinned.\u00a0<\/em>This means your post will appear at the top of the forum and stay there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Remove the post time delay<\/strong> &#8211; if you have this option you can make sure notifications about your post are emailed immediately rather than wait the 30 minutes for potential editing. Please note this will only apply to subscribers who have chosen to receive individual emails for each post rather than a daily digest.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>Click\u00a0<em>Post to forum<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Replying to messages<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>Open your forum and click on\u00a0<em>Discuss this topic<\/em> to view and make replies.<\/li>\n<li>Click\u00a0<em>Reply<\/em> on the post you wish to reply to.<\/li>\n<li>Write your reply &#8211; again if you need some\u00a0advanced capabilities click\u00a0<em>Advanced<\/em>\u00a0<em>(<\/em>file attachments or removing the post time delay).<\/li>\n<li>Click\u00a0<em>Submit<\/em> (or\u00a0<em>Post to forum\u00a0<\/em>on the advanced page).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Forums to maintain confidentiality<\/h2>\n<p>Sometimes it is useful to make sure a forum is only available to particular staff and students. To do this there are a few extra steps needed from those shown above. Anyone staff member who needs access to the forum needs to have an\u00a0<em>Editor<\/em> role in your course &#8211; someone who is an\u00a0<em>Administrator<\/em> in your course can assign the new role. In order to make sure only those\u00a0users can access the forum you&#8217;ll need to change the permissions on the forum.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Login to Moodle and navigate to the course with your forum in.<\/li>\n<li>Click on the Forum to open it.<\/li>\n<li>From the Administration block (usually on the right-hand side of the page) go to Forum administration &gt; Permissions.<\/li>\n<li>Find\u00a0<em>View discussions<\/em> under the\u00a0<em>Activity:Forum\u00a0<\/em>heading &#8211; this will show you all the roles that can currently access the current forum.<\/li>\n<li>Delete all the roles that you don&#8217;t want to view the forum using the\u00a0<em>x<\/em> button and add extra roles with the\u00a0<em>+<\/em> button. You should be left with something like: Editor, Convenor and Local student.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Organising the permissions in this way allows only the roles selected to view the forum. As the people you have chosen to view the forum have been given the additional role of \u2018Editor\u2019 they can access the forum, along with whoever has the role of \u2018Convenor\u2019. If you want the \u2018Administrator\u2019 to view the forums, then just add the role of \u2018Administrator\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>It is important to remove the \u2018Staff\u2019 role. This is because all staff enrolled in Moodle are enrolled as \u2018Staff\u2019 by default. With this default \u2018Staff\u2019 role, you can view most pages on Moodle, which includes all pages made \u2018visible\u2019 to ELM and ALM. This means that if someone with the \u2018Staff\u2019 role member accidentally clicks on a forum on any page, they will not be able to access the discussions. This is why the role of \u2018Editor\u2019 is assigned to the particular staff member(s). It blocks unwanted \u2018Staff\u2019 from accidentally clicking on the forum and possibly viewing confidential material, while allowing selected staff to view the discussions.<\/p>\n<p>It is important to tell the staff who have been assigned the role of \u2018Editor\u2019 to not click the \u2018Turn editing on\u2019 button as they then can edit the page.<\/p>\n<h3>Related Pages<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/general-information\/user-roles\/\">User Roles<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary A forum\u00a0is where asynchronous communication takes place between all members of a class \u2013 teaching staff and students. You can limit access to certain users and groups.\u00a0A forum is made up of a series of discussion topics and replies. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":24,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-208","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/help.otago.ac.nz\/moodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}