A News forum displays in the course summary section of the course home page of every course. Use the News forum when you want to make an announcement to all people enrolled in the course.
The News forum is useful for announcements for several reasons:
- Every enrolled person is automatically subscribed by forced subscription (so that they cannot unsubscribe)
- Only teachers and administrators may post to the News forum, and only they can reply to posts, so it's unlikely to become cluttered with discussion.
- You can include attachments, images, video and other media in a News forum post, so it is a very flexible tool for delivering news and information.
Getting started with News Forums
Using a Discussion Forum
Forums are sites within an online course that facilitate two-way discussion between you and your students, and among your students.
There are five types of forum to choose from: (Review descriptions to to see what best fits your needs)
- A single simple discussion - A single topic discussion developed on one page, which is useful for short focused discussions
- Standard forum for general use - An open forum where anyone can start a new topic at any time; this is the best general-purpose forum
- Each person posts one discussion - Each person can post exactly one new discussion topic (everyone can reply to them though); this is useful when you want each student to start a discussion about, say, their reflections on the week's topic, and everyone else responds to these
- Q and A Forum - Instead of initiating discussions participants pose a question in the initial post of a discussion. Students may reply with an answer, but they will not see the replies of other Students to the question in that discussion until they have themselves replied to the same discussion.
- Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format
Setting up Discussion Forums