forum iconSetting up a forum activity

Back to Forum

Create a forum

  1. Navigate to your LEO unit
  2. Click 'Turn editing on'
  3. Scroll to the section in your Moodle site you would like to add the Forum, select ‘Add an activity or resource’. Under Activities select ‘Forum’.

Forum settings

  1. At minimum, you will need to give your Forum a name. It can be helpful to enter text in the ‘Description’ text box, so that your students know what the Forum activity is for, and what you would like to them to do. Click on the box next to ‘Display description on unit page’ if you would like the description to be visible from the main page of your LEO unit.
  2. By default your Forum type will be 'Standard forum for single use'. There are five Forum types to choose from. The selection you make at this stage will alter the way your student's are able to interact with the Forum activity. More information about these Forum Types is available under 'Forum types.
  3. Once you have selected your settings as appropriate, select ‘Save and return to unit’.

There are several different kinds of forums, each suited to a different context and with varying key features.
You can select the type of Forum you would like to add to your LEO Unit under the 'General' tab in your settings page. Simply click on the dropdown menu next to 'Forum type'.

forum type dropdown option 

A brief description of each type of Forum is included below:

Standard forums for general use

An open forum that allows participants to create their own topics, post and reply. Whilst a standard forum provides the most open format it can generate a lot of discussion to keep track of. This is where you need to set expectations around how much time, as a teacher, you will invest in responding to posts, or if it is for peers to respond only.

Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format

An open forum where anyone can start a new post. Topics are displayed on a single page with links to ‘discuss this topic’.

Each person posts one discussion

Participants can only post one topic, which everyone can then reply to. This is good if you want to create a body of knowledge where each student is responsible for only one topic.

A single simple discussion

A single topic everyone can reply to (cannot be used with separate groups). Keeps the postings on topic.

Q&A forum

Participants must post their answer before seeing other replies. This is a useful forum to use to provide equity in allowing all participants to respond without feeling they are repeating previous comments.

There are a number of additional settings you should be aware of when you are setting up your Forum.

Attachments and word count

Select the Maximum attachment size, maximum number of attachments that can be made to a single discussion post and whether you want display the word count for each post.

Subscription and tracking

You can force subscription of a forum for your participants (as happens with the News forum), which means they will automatically receive an email of posts within a forum (depending on their notification preferences). ‘Auto subscription’: when a participant posts into a forum they are automatically subscribed, but allows them to op out of the subscription later. An ‘Optional subscription’ allows your students to choose at the time of posting whether to subscribe or not.

The 'Read tracking' enables students to keep 'track' of which posts they have read, and which remain unread.

Post threshold for blocking

Sometimes you may wish to moderate activity to help administer the forum. For instance you may want limit how many times a participant posts each week, to encourage reflection and concise writing skills. Students are warned when they are approaching the threshold.

Restrict access

For more information about restrict access, refer to hiding or restrict access

Completion module settings

For more information about working with groups, refer to groups and groupings

Activity completion

For more information about activity completion, refer to activity completion.

Page last updated on 13/01/2021
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