10.10. About the Forum (Announcement)

What is a forum?

This module allows you to create bulletin boards (BBS) and host online discussions.

What is an announcement?

This feature is used to send announcements to all students in the course. Only instructors can post announcements; students cannot view them or reply to them.

These are automatically created within sections when a course is created. Although they are a type of "Forum" activity, you cannot create new ones, so please exercise caution when deleting them.

If you want to create an additional announcement, you can duplicate an existing one and publish it.

10.10.1. Types of Forums

There are the following types of forums.

• A single simple discussion
  Each participant replies to a single topic.

• Each person post one discussion
  Each participant can create one topic, and they can reply to each other.

• Q and A forum
  Participants must post their own comments before reading others' posts.

• Standard forum displayed in blog-like format
  Participants can start topics at any time. The titles and content of each topic are displayed in a list.

• Standard Forum for General Use
  Participants can start topics at any time. The titles of each topic are displayed in a list.

• Announcement
  This is automatically created when you create a course. You can use it to send announcements to all course participants. Students cannot create topics or reply to them.

10.10.2. How to Use the Forum

1. Install the forum module.

2. Configure the forum.

3. Once you've finished configuring the settings, click "Save and view"

The following page will appear, allowing you to create a topic. To create a topic, click "Add discussion topic"
*If the forum type is set to "Simple discussion with a single topic," you cannot add topics.

4. Enter the topic content, then click "Post to forum" at the bottom of the page.

5. Once the post is complete, a message like the one below will appear.

6. To reply, click the topic you want to reply to.

7. Click "Reply" enter your post, and then click "Post to forum"

10.10.3. Forum Settings

<General>

• Forum Name: Enter the text that will appear as the link to the forum on the course page.
• Description: Enter a general description of the forum.
• Display description on the course page: Check this box to display the description on the course page.
• Forum Type: Select the type of forum.

＜Availability＞

• Due date: Set the forum's expiration date. Posts will still be allowed after this date, so if you want to prevent posts after a specific date, set the forum's closure date.

• Cut-off date: If set, the forum will no longer accept posts after this date.

<Attachments and Word Count>

• Maximum attachment size: Set the maximum upload size for attachments.

• Maximum number of attachments: Set the maximum number of attachments allowed per post.

• Display word count: Displays the total number of words in the text.

<Subscription and tracking>

• Subscription Mode: Specifies whether forum participants receive email notifications when new posts are made in the forum. Unless there is a specific reason, please set this to "Unsubscribe" (so that participants do not receive email notifications). Since the volume of notification emails can become quite high, especially in forums with many participants, please be sure to set this to "Unsubscribe"

• Read tracking: Selecting "Off" will disable the unread management feature. If you select "Optional" participants can enable or disable the unread notification feature.

<Discussion Locking>

• Lock discussions after period of inactivity: Locks the discussion after the specified period has elapsed.

<Post threshold for blocking>

• Time period for blocking: Set the number of days posts will be restricted if the daily post limit is reached.

<Whole forum grading>

• Grade: Configure the forum's grading settings. Choose either a scale or a rubric.
  • Point: Numerical grade
  • None: No grade is assigned; evaluation consists of feedback only
  • Scale: Evaluation based on the rating scale configured on the site

<Ratings>

• Aggregate type: Configure how the score is displayed on the grading sheet.
  • Average of rating: The average of all scores.
  • Count of rating: The number of items that have been evaluated and contribute to the final score.
  • Maximum rating: The maximum score will be the final score.
  • Minimum rating: The minimum grade will be the final grade.
  • Sum of rating: All scores are added together.

For items not listed here, please refer to the official Moodle website or click the "?" icon in the bottom-right corner of each screen to access "Documentation for this page."