SOL tools
Communication tools
Forum
The 'Forum' is a very powerful tool that promotes engagement and interactivity. It can be used for many innovative purposes in educational settings, but teaching forums and student forums are arguably the two more significant distinctions.
There are two forums already featured in the units on SOL:
- Module conversations - this forum provides direct contact to the participants on your unit. It has a 'forced' subscription which means everyone on the unit is subscribed and they cannot remove themselves. You can add a post, this will be emailed to your students (and they will also receive a notification on SOL). Students can reply to these but cannot start a discussion.
- Frequently Asked Questions - this forum is good for class discussions. However, it has an 'optional' subscription so participants can choose whether to subscribe. Students would go to this forum online to view the questions and answers as they wouldn't be emailed to them. This could be changed in the settings to a 'forced' subscription.
There are four types of 'Forums' that can be used:
- Standard forum for general use (default)
- Single, simple discussion
- Question and answer
- Standard forum displayed like a blog.
Top tip: For some practical ideas for using forums in teaching and learning, visit the Teaching Toolshed pages.
For more information on the forum tool, see docs.moodle.org - forum.