The forum activity allows students and teachers to exchange ideas by posting comments. There are five basic forum types. Forums can be configured so that the posts are graded by either the teacher or other students.

This article is about how to add a forum. To learn strategies for facilitating discussions in forums, see this related article:

• Moodle - Facilitating forums

Topics Covered In This Article

How to Add a Forum

1. From the main course page, enable Edit mode at the top right.

2. Locate the section in your course where you want to add the Forum. At the bottom of the section select the Add an activity or resource button and then select Forum.

3. Enter a Forum name which will appear as the activity title. The Description field is optional, but it's recommended that you describe the purpose of the Forum.

Forum type

There are 5 types of forums to choose from when creating a discussion forum. The default is Standard forum for general use.

1. A single simple discussion: A single discussion topic which everyone can reply to.
2. Each person posts one discussion: Each student can post exactly one new discussion topic, which everyone can reply to.
3. Q and A forum: The instructor writes the initial post or question, and then students must post their reply and wait for the editing delay (30 minutes) to expire before being able to see the replies from other students.
4. Standard forum displayed in blog-like format: Anyone can start a new discussion or reply, but the discussion topics are displayed on one page with “Discuss this topic” links.
5. Standard forum for general use: The Moodle default. Anyone can start a new discussion or reply.

Subscription and tracking

You can change the subscription mode for a forum. When a participant is subscribed to a forum it means they will receive email copies of forum posts. Read tracking, if enabled, allows participants to track read and unread posts in the forum.

There are four subscription mode options:

1. Optional subscription - Nobody is subscribed initially. Participants can choose to subscribe or unsubscribe.
2. Forced subscription - Everyone is subscribed and cannot unsubscribe. This is the default for a course announcements forum.
3. Auto subscription - Everyone is subscribed initially but can choose to unsubscribe.
4. Subscription disabled - Subscriptions are not allowed.

Group Mode

Use to configure class-wide and team forums.

This setting has 3 options:

1. No groups - A class-wide forum.
2. Separate groups - Each group member can only read and reply to the their own group's posts; other groups are not visible.
3. Visible groups - Similar to separate groups but participants can also see (but not post or reply to) forum posts from other groups.

Restrict access

Use to configure when students can access the forum. The most common restriction is to set a date when students can access the forum. To do so, select Add restriction, select Date, set the date range and then select Add Restriction.

4. When you have finished setting up the forum, click Save and return to course. If you want to review the forum, click Save and display.

Content on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.