Contributing to a Forum

This refers to Moodle 3.8 from September 2020 onwards  

A forum is a collaborative activity that tutors can setup to allow students to chat. Discussions can be general or may be relevant to a particular module e.g. for group work.

To contribute to a general Forum, see below.

Once you’re in the Forum page, in our example ‘Introductions Please…’, you should see guidance on how to use the Forum and you may see previous entries from the tutor and/or other students.

Creating a new discussion topic

1. To create your own discussion topic in the Forum, click on the ‘Add a new discussion topic’ button at the top of the page.
   
2. An editing page for a new topic will then appear. Once you’ve completed the required information scroll to the bottom of the page and click the ‘Post to forum’ button.

3. If you need to add a File to your Forum Post, select Advanced and drag the file you want to attach into the Attachments box. Alternatively you can find the file by clicking on the File icon on the Advanced page.

Posting a reply in a discussion topic

1. If you would like to read someone else’s discussion topic and post replies, in the main Forum page click on the title of the discussion topic NOT the name of the author. 

Tip:  The discussion topic always appears in the first column of the list of topics.

Once in the discussion topic you will see the ‘parent’ post which is the discussion topic and reply posts following it.

Tip: You can change the way forum posts are displayed by clicking on the drop down menu above the original forum post.

     2. You can reply to either the parent or other reply posts within the discussion by clicking on the ‘Reply’ link next to the post you wish to reply to.

     3. A textbox will appear for you to type in your response and click Submit. If you want to reply to a forum post privately, click on Reply privately checkbox before clicking on Submit.