Creating discussion forums and topics
Before you create a discussion topic you must create at least one forum. You can use forums to organize your discussion topics in categories.
Your course can include as many topics as you like, organized into forums. Topics are where discussions actually take place, where users post and read messages, but each topic must belong to a forum.
Create a new forum
- On the Forums & Topics List page, click
New Forum on the top tool menu.
- Enter a Title for the forum.
- If you want to automatically create a topic, select the Create a new topic in this forum with the same title check box.
- If you want to create a description, enter it in the Description field.
- Set any forum options you want and click Save to save the forum, or Save & Add Topic to save the forum and create a new topic within it.
Create a new topic
- On the Forums & Topics List page, click
New Topic on the top tool menu, or on the forum in which you want to create the topic.
- In the Forum drop-down list, select the forum in which you want to create the topic, or create a new forum by clicking the New Forum link.
- Enter a Title for the topic.
- Enter a Description.
Depending on your course settings, topic descriptions might be displayed in the message list where users read and post messages. If this setting is enabled, you should keep descriptions short and avoid using large images.
- Set the topic options you want and click Save to save the topic, or Save and New to save the topic and create another one.
Setting options for forums and topics
The following settings are available when you create a new forum or topic. Any settings you apply to a forum apply to all the forum’s topics; for example, if you have several topics in which you want to allow anonymous messages, you can put these topics in a single forum and enable anonymous messages for that forum.
| Enable users to post messages anonymously |
Select Allow anonymous messages. Note that you cannot evaluate anonymous messages. |
| Require messages to be approved |
Select Messages must be approved before being displayed. |
| Hide the forum |
In the Availability section:
- To hide the forum, select Hide this forum. It remains hidden until you select Forum is always visible is selected again.
- To make the forum visible within a date range, select Forum is visible for a specific date range and specify a Start Date when the forum becomes visible and/or an End Date when it is hidden again.
|
| Lock the forum |
If the options in the Locking options section are not visible, click Show locking options, then do one of the following:
- To the lock the forum when it is created, select Lock forum. It will remain locked until Unlock forum is selected again.
- To open the forum within a date range, select Unlock forum for a specific date range and specify a Start Date when the forum is unlocked and/or an End Date when it is locked again.
|
| Assess the topic |
You can choose to evaluate user’s individual messages and have Learning Environment automatically calculate a topic score for each user, or you can assign a topic scores directly to each user.
See Assessing (evaluating) a discussion topic for information.
|
| Associate the topic with learning objectives |
- Click the Objectives tab.
- Click the Associate Learning Objectives button.
- Browse or Search for the learning objective you want to associate with the topic/module.
- Click Add Selected.
- If you want to add an assessment, click the context menu for the learning objective's name and click Add Assessment.
|
See also
