LP 2.5 has a new Forums engine (described
here) running alongside the 'old' Forums engine (dealt with on this page)
This
section deals only with Forums within a course. General
Forums (accessed from the student PIM) can be disabled
across the school as described here.
B
Course Forums,
designed by the teacher or by students, could become a key feature of your approach
to course design.
C
It
is essential that students realise that all traffic through the Forums
is recorded and checked by a teacher. Your school should have an Acceptable Use
Policy for the Learning Platform.
D
We
assume that you have created a course and set up an internal Chapter
structure which includes some content (a document or a web site) which will form
the focus for the Forum discussion.
E
To
set up a Forum discussion thread use PIM>MyCourse>Tutor>Resources>Forum.
As each new course is created a general Forum for
the course is automatically created.
F
You
can Edit the thread name and Delete
the whole thread (and all its messages) if you wish. You can also add new threads
to the same Forum area.
G
To
start off you should click the thread title (Earth and Space
in the example shown). This opens the thread and will eventually list all messages
posted here. To start with it is blank of course.
H
The
button allows you
to set the details shown here - this is one level of control you have over monitoring
traffic through the Forum. Notification messages
are sent to your Profile email address.
Profile
I
Next
you should click Create New Post,
which opens a standard message writing page allowing a new message to be created.
You can add an Attachment if you wish, and you can
decorate the message with (text) emoticons. When all is complete, click
to post the message.
J
Messages
are read by clicking on the message name - the original author can Edit
a message; others can only
in the normal way.
K
The
Status of individual messages can be toggled on/off
- messages toggled off still exist in the teacher view but are hidden from students.
Students do not have this facility.
L
You
can also toggle on/off the Closed button - when a
thread is Closed it becomes locked as Read-only
and no new contributions can be added - you could use this if a timed homework
activity had been set and the deadline had passed. Students do not have this facility.
M
Messages
may be Moved to a different thread if necessary.
Clicking the Creator's name links to their Profile.
button allows you
to set the details shown here - this is one level of control you have over monitoring
traffic through the Forum. Notification messages
are sent to your Profile email address.
Profile
to post the message.
in the normal way.
