A forum is used to organize discussions and discussion topics. There are many settings you can apply to a forum that affect what tools will be available for your use in the Discussion Board.
- Standard View: This option gives students the traditional view of the forum-- the ability to see all the threads created at any time.
- Participants must create a thread in order to view other threads in this forum: With this option, students have to create their own thread before they can see others contributions. (Please note that with this option students cannot delete or edit their own posts and cannot post anonymously.)
- No Grading in Forum: This option will set no grades for forum posts. No column will be added to the Grade Center.
- Grade Forum: Points Possible: This option will allow you to grade forums posts. A column will be added to the Grade Center. When you select this option, you will need to type the points possible you want to give the forum in the Points Possible box.
- Grade Threads: This option will allow you to grade individual threads and requires a specific set of options enabled, specifically, Allow Members to Create New Threads will have to be turned off. Blackboard will do this automatically and add a column to the Grade Center.
- Do not allow subscriptions: This option will remove any subscribe buttons. Students cannot subscribe to threads or forums.
- Allow members to subscribe to threads: This option will allow students to subscribe to new threads. If you choose this selection, you will also need to choose if you want the subscription sent in the body of an email to the student, or if you want the subscription sent as a link to the student.
- Allow members to subscribe to a forum: This option will allow students to subscribe to new forums. If you choose this selection, you will also need to choose if you want the subscription sent in the body of an email to the student, or if you want the subscription sent as a link to the student.
In the first section of the forum settings, you have several options related to author settings, post settings, tags, and more:
- Allow anonymous posts: This will allow students to post to the forum anonymously. This is not recommended for most forums.
- Allow author to delete own posts: This will allow students to permanently delete their own messages leaving no record of their content. You can specify whether they can remove any post (which also removes replies from other students) or only posts with no replies.
- Allow author to edit own published posts: This option will allow students to edit their messages.
- Allow members to create new threads: This option allows students to post new threads to respond to the forum or start a new direction for the discussion.
- Allow file attachments: This option will allow students to add files for peer-reviews or to share examples.
- Allow users to reply with quote: This option allows students to include the text of the original message in any replies to that message.
- Force moderation of posts: This option requires that all messages are reviewed by a moderator before they are published in a forum.
- Allow post tagging: This option allows the forum manager or instructor to create tags or text labels to filter and search messages using the tags. Tags can slow the loading of the page.
- Allow members to rate posts: This option will allow users to rate individual posts using a five S scale.
For a refresher on the difference in threads and forums, see Discussion Board.
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