Teaching with Technology

Forums have many options, but most faculty at Reed use the default set up.

• The default forum type, "Standard forum for general use," allows each student to begin a new discussion topic.
• If everyone is responding to the same topic or prompt, and you would like all students to see all their peer's posts by default, change the forum type to "A single simple discussion."

• If you require posts to be a certain length, you may want to to set the Display word count option under Attachments and word count in the Forum settings to yes.
• By default, all users may optionally subscribe to the forum to get email alerts of new posts. If you would like an email notification each time a student posts to the forum, click on the Subscribe to the forum button in the upper right of the main forum page.

If you have specific needs or want to learn more about other forum settings, get in touch with us at moodle@reed.edu.

• Most forums allow users to add a new discussion topic, or post. To do so, click on the Add discussion topic button. Or, click on an existing topic to read it and reply.
  

• Choose the Reply option under a forum post or existing reply to post a response.
• Note that Moodle does not allow students to edit their posts, so forums may not be the best option for longer writing. Faculty may edit their forum posts.
• You attach files to your forum posts or include images. You can also make short (2 minute) audio recordings within forum posts. When replying to others' forum posts or when adding a post in certain forum types, you may need to select the Advanced option to the bottom right of the text box to see the full text editor.
• Faculty (but not students) can also send private replies. This can be useful if you want to comment only to the student who has made the post.

• If you use forums in your class, be sure to set clear expectations for students. For instance, let them know if they must post to every forum, how long their posts should be, when posts are due, etc.
• If you expect students to respond to each other's forum posts, you may want to set an earlier deadline for initial posts so that students have a chance to look over all their classmates' posts when responding. Otherwise, the first few posts tend to get all the interaction and students miss later contributions.
• If you post discussion questions to a forum, sure to draw on content from forum posts during class. Students disengage from forums when they feel they are not relevant to what happens in the classroom.