Forums in Moodle - Student support

Different types of forums

There are often several forums in a Moodle course and these are used for communication between those involved in the course.

Frequently recurring forum is

• News forum
  Here course teachers announces important news and more. Only teachers write here.
• Questions to the course teachers
  Here you can ask questions you have about the course, as long as the question is not of a personal nature. Both questions and answers are seen by everyone involved in the course, and both teachers and students can write and reply to messages.
• Forum: Group
  Here each group has its own, separate "room" for discussion. Can also be seen by the teachers of the course.

When there are posts you have not read in a forum this is signaled on the course main page when you are logged in.

To read messages in forum

Click the forum's title on the course homw page to view all discussions and posts.

To read a post, click on its title.

Now you can read the message and download documents, if the sender has attached such.

Sorry for the Swedish text in the images.

Writing a new message in a forum

The forums in a course can have different purposes and functionalities and the forum "News forum" is for messages from the teacher. Only teachers can write messages in this forum.

In other forums, both the teachers and students can write, but there may be other features too.
An example is the group forum, where only members of the same study group can write to each other. In order to post a new topic in a forum, click on forum's title, and then click the button "Add a new topic":

Here you write a "Subject" (1) and your "Message" (2). Note that you must enter data in both these fields, else not sent your message. 

You can upload any "Attachments" (3) and finally you post your message by clicking on the "Post to forum" button (4).

Post a reply to an existing discussion

1. Click on the forum link (preceded by the forum icon ) in your course.
   
   
2. Click on the discussion link you want to respond to.
   
   
   
3. Click Reply in the message you want to respond to.
   
   
   
4. Enter your message and any other information you’d like to include.
   Note: You can include an image or file attachment (click Add). The Message box provides common functions you can use to create your message.
   
   
5. Once done, click Post to forum. Your message will be posted in the forum.
   Note: As long as no one has responded to your post, you will have a 30-minute opportunity to edit or delete your message after clicking Post to forum.