To create a new forum, with the editing turned on, in the section you wish to add your forum, click the “Add an activity or resource” link and choose Forum. This will take you to the forum settings page titled “Adding a new forum”.

Naming the Forum

You can now edit the short name of the forum which will be displayed on the module homepage and select the type of forum you would like to use with your students. There are 5 forum types as set out below:

Enabling the description on the module page

Once you have selected your forum type you can enter the description of the forum outlining the objectives and guidelines if any. You can enable this description to be visible on the module hompage by ticking the display option as shown below:

Creating roles with permissions to rate

Forum posts can be rated using a scale. By default, only teachers can rate forum posts, though students can be given permission to do so if desired. This is a useful tool for giving student's participation grades. Any ratings given in the forum are recorded in the grade book.

You can set an aggregate type, in other words, decide how all the ratings given to posts in a forum are combined to form the final grade (for each post and for the whole forum activity). Some scales do not lend themselves to certain types of aggregates.

There are five options: