Setting Up 

Discussion Forum's

- Defining forum topics -

By default every module we create has its own discussion forum. In self-study courses, the students can create their own forum topics to communicate with one another. Those forums are opened as soon as the course opens. 

In interactive classes, instructors have a great deal of control in managing module forums. This rest of this segment covers those features. 

1- Instructors have the option of defining topics for each forum

2- Instructors can create global forum topics when they build the course that will be in every class that is created for this course. If they don't make a topic global when they create it they will have to re-enter those topics every time they create a new class.

Making topics global saves a ton of time. We explain how to do this below in this segment.

3- Instructors can pin their defined topics to the top of the list of topics (above student defined topics)

4- Instructors can require students to post a specific number comments he they expect to get a certificate of completion. Only Interactive classes can have "required forum posts". 

5- Instructors have the option, if they wish, to be notified by email when a student posts to a forum topic.

6- Instructors have the option to make their forum options global for every class that they run. This eliminates the need to add the forum information every time they create a new class. If they wish, they can create forum topics one time and it's done for every class they hold in the future.

1 min 43 sec

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Creating a Topic in a Forum 

Many times instructors want to create the topics that students can post questions to in the forums found in each module of the course.

Keep in mind that every module has it's own forum.  To create a forum topic. the instructors must  navigate to the class, then the module in that class they want to work on and finally select the "create new topic".

Step 1

Navigate to the class

See the image below,  select sample class (see the red arrow)

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Step 2

Once in the class

Select Discussion

 That brings up the sample class dashboard - image below: To see the list of modules (so you can select the one you want to work on) select Discussion. The circle with the 2 arrows.

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Step 3

Select Module you wish to work on

Selecting discussion brings up the list of modules (see the image below). There are 4 modules in this class (see the 4 arrows). Now we need to select which module we want to define a forum topic in. If you look closely you will see module 1 already has 3 topics, and module 2, 3 and 4 have no topics.

For this tutorial I will select module 2 to define a topic. 

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Select 

Create New Topic

We are now in the place where we can start to define forum topics. We see that no topics have been defined. We can select the red Create New Topic (see the red arrow in the image below).

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Selecting 

Fill in the new topic information and perpetrators

See image below

This screen above is where the instructors take control of their forums. They can :

1- Add the new title

2- The new title can be pinned to the top of the list of topics in a forum. If students post topics, the instructor's topics will always be above then in the list

3-  The topic can be added to the instructor's watch list if they want to be notified when students post answers 

4- Instructors can make a topic global so it will be in every forum for all future classes. This is a big time saver for interactive courses. 

5- They can get an email whenever a student posts to this topic.

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Setting Mandatory Forum Posts 

For Students

Instructors have the option to require students to make a certain number of posts in module forums if the student expects to get a certificate of completion. This is totally optional and up to the instructor.

Should the instructor choose to do this they will need to set it up for each module forum they intend to make mandatory.

This is very easy to set up.  It is covered in detail in Module 3 segment 2 titled Managing Class Modules.