Forums: Overview

The Forums tool allows instructors or site leaders to create an unlimited number of discussion forums, and is integrated closely with other tools such as Resources and Gradebook.

Forum Menu:

New Forum: Allows you to create new forums to post different topics under

Organize: New Forums and Topics will automatically appear at the top of your list.  Organize lets you rearrange the topics within a Forum or reoder your Forums

Template Settings: You can modify the Forum's settings globally so that each new Forum or Topic will automatically have the settings and permissions of your choice

Statistics & Grading: Statistics summarizes each participants activity by identify how much they authored, read, and will display both in an itemized format.

Watch: You can adjust your notifications and emails that you receive from the Forums tool

The topics for this quick guide include:

1. Forum’s structure: By understanding the basic hierarchy of a forum you can begin to create a unique environment for online communication
2. Statistics & Grading: Interactions can be assigned a point value and sent to the Gradebook along with private comments.  The Statistics option provides a snapshot of participation from each member in your site
3. Managing Groups & Sections: Learn how to set-up and maintain Forums based on manually created groups or multiple sections in the same course site.

Related Resources:

• Detailed instructions (pdf)
• Knowledge Base (IU) Key Concepts