Setting up the Forum Activity

The Forum Activity is one of the most popular activities in Moodle and Totara Learn as it allows you to build an online community of learners through discussion.  Teachers or course managers can choose to rate or grade the forums or simply have it automatically completed after a set amount of posts.  It is a robust activity with many different settings, so here is a guide to help you set up your Forum for your use cases.

This article covers 6 main areas of the Forum settings:

1. Types of Forums
2. Subscription settings
3. Ratings
4. Whole Forum Grading (Moodle 3.8)
5. Group Modes
6. Activity Completion

1. Types of Forums

When setting up a new forum activity, you will need to choose the type of forum.  There are 5 different forum types:

1. Standard forum for general use (default) - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time
2. Single, simple discussion - A single discussion topic which everyone can reply to (cannot be used with separate groups)
3. Question and Answer forum - Students must first post their perspective before viewing other students' posts
4. Standard forum displayed in blog-like format - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time, in which discussion topics are displayed on one page with "Discuss this topic" links
5. Each person posts one discussion - Each student can post exactly one new discussion post, which everyone can reply to

2. Subscription Settings

When a student is subscribed to a forum, it means that they will receive notification (depending on the user's messaging settings preferences) of each new posting.  By default, forum notifications are sent about 30 minutes after the post was saved. 

Students can usually choose whether or not they want to be subscribed to each forum; however, the teacher can choose to force subscription on a particular forum then all course users will be subscribed automatically, even those that enrol at a later time.

There are 4 subscription modes:

1. Optional - Participants choose if they want to subscribe to the forum
2. Forced - Everyone is subscribed and cannot unsubscribe
3. Auto-subscription - Everyone is automatically subscribed but they can unsubscribe at any time
4. Subscription disabled - Subscriptions are not allowed

3. Ratings

Ratings are a great way for teachers to provide a grade for a students' post.  By default, only course managers can rate posts, but you can also adjust the permissions to allow learners to post. 

Ratings are given on a scale, which you can customize in Course administration>Grades>Scales.

Here I've set up an average of ratings since I may rate multiple posts per student based on a scale of 1-5 that I've already set up.

4. Whole Forum Grading (Moodle 3.8)

This is a new feature in Moodle 3.8, and it allows teachers to assign a grade to the entire body of postings from an individual student (as opposed to each individual post as with Ratings).  When grading is enabled from here, grading options appear, allowing the teacher to select points or a scale.

Advanced grading rubrics may also be used and can be selected from Forum settings. 

5. Group Modes

Using groups is a great way to manage larger groups in online discussions.  Here are some pointers to help your setup.  You must have groups set up  in your course settings to use this feature.

Separate Groups:

• Teachers are given the option of adding a new discussion topic for all participants or a selected group. If a teacher adds a new discussion topic for a selected group, then only group members can reply to it.
• Students can only start discussions for their group.
• Students can only reply to discussions started by other group members or discussions for their group started by a teacher.

Visible groups:

• Teachers are given the option of adding a new discussion topic for all participants or a selected group. If a teacher adds a new discussion topic for a selected group, then only group members can reply to it.
• Students can only start discussions for their group.
• Students can only reply to discussions started by other group members or teachers.

Teachers are able to toggle different groups in a Separate Group forum, and learners are also able to toggle different groups in Visible groups.

Teachers, and other users with the capability moodle/site:accessallgroups set to allow, can view and post in all forum discussions, regardless of the group mode setting.

6. Forum Completion Settings

You can set the Forum to be 'complete' when a student completes a certain amount of posts.   In the Activity Completion settings area, select Show activity as complete when conditions are met, then select your conditions:

• Student must post discussions or replies - the student must either start or reply to a discussion; the total number of posts they must make can be specified in the box
• Student must create discussions - the student must start a discussion topic; the total number of posts they must make can be specified in the box  
  Note: this requirement cannot be satisfied using the Simple simple discussion and the Q&A forum types since students cannot create discussions in those two types. 
• Student must post replies - the student must reply to a forum; the total number of posts they must make can be specified in the box

In this example, the student will be marked complete when they make at least 4 posts and have been given a grade through the Whole Forum Grading option.

Related Articles:

• Connect, Collaborate and Motivate with Online Discussions (Master Class)
• Creating & Managing Moodle Forums (Lambda Lab)
• Two Reports to Monitor Your Forum Activities (article)