1. Setting up a Forum in Moodle
(Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)

2. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
After logging in to Moodle, click on the name of the course in which
you want to customize a discussion forum using the advanced settings. In this case, click on Demo Course.

3. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
Click on the discussion forum to be customized, say How to be a good Teacher, which is located in Topic 1.

4. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
Then click on the Update this Forum button at the top right corner of the screen.

5. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The Forum type field allows you to select the type of discussion forum. There are four types of forums to choose from.

6. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
By default, Standard forum for general use is set. This type of forum is an open forum where any course participants can
post a topic at any time. This is the most commonly used and best general-purpose forum.

7. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
A single simple discussion is a forum that has only one single topic and the topic can only be created by the teacher.

8. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The option Each person posts one discussion allows each course participant to create only one discussion topic.
Each participant can however respond to multiple topics created by the other participants.

9. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
Q and A forum requires course participants to post on a forum before viewing others’ posts in the forum.
After the initial posting, they can view and respond to others’ postings.

10. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
Force everyone to be subscribed is a function that allows you to choose whether or not to send email
notifications automatically to all course participants whenever a post is made on the forum or the post is updated.

11. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
By default, No is set, meaning that no email notifications will be sent automatically
to the course participants when a message is posted. However, the course participants can choose
to receive notifications for new posts by subscribing to the forum.

12. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The option Yes, forever means that every participant will receive an email notification for every post posted to the forum.

13. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The option Yes, initially means that all current and future course participants will receive an email notification
for the posts posted to the forum, but the course participants can unsubscribe themselves so that
they will not receive any notification for new posts in that forum anymore.

14. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The last option Subscriptions not allowed stops participants from subscribing to the forum.
Course participants do not have a choice on whether or not to subscribe to the forum.

15. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
There are three options for the setting Read tracking for this forum?.
It allows you to choose whether or not to track read and unread messages in the forum.

16. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The default setting is Optional. It means that participants can turn tracking on or off as they wish.

17. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The option Off means that tracking is turned off. Participants cannot see any information
about read and unread messages in the forum.

18. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
If the option On is selected, the tracking information on read and unread messages will be provided to the course participants.
Participants can also turn on or off the read tracking function at their own profile (via Edit profile).

19. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
The setting Group mode offers three options on how the course participants are to be grouped.

20. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
No Groups means that course participants will not be put into groups.

21. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
Separate groups means that members of each group can only view the forum posts posted by their own group members.
Their forum posts will be invisible to the members of the other groups. However, the teacher can view the forum posts of all groups.

22. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
Visible groups means that a group’s discussion can be read by members of all groups.

23. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
When you have finished setting up the forum, click on the Save and return to course button.

24. Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology Moodle Series: Setting Up a Forum in Moodle (Advanced Settings in General and on Group Mode)
Web page: http://www.ied.edu.hk/lttc
Email: lttc@ied.edu.hk
This learning series numbered MOT63-12.06.v1 of the Centre for Learning, Teaching and
Technology (LTTC) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong License.