Moodle Knowledge Base
How to engage students in Forum discussion?
Digital strategies for Forum:
Forum can be an ideal place to provide explicit guidelines and encourage students to post their results of exploration and get feedback. The Forum activity allows students and teachers to exchange ideas by posting comments as part of a 'thread'. Files such as images and media maybe included in forum posts. The teacher can choose to grade and/or rate forum posts and it is also possible to give students permission to rate each other's posts.
You can use Forum to encourage the students to participate and interact with peers by awarding them a grade or releasing new content upon completion.
Steps to create a Forum:
Turn on editing for the course.
In the section you wish to add an activity, select the Add an activity or resource menu.
Select the Forum activity.
Give the Forum a name and edit the description if necessary.
Choose your Forum type, clicking the question mark (?) icon for descriptions of each type. If you're unsure, use the default Standard Forum for general use.
Expand the other sections to define the settings you want.
Click Save and display and, optionally, add a post to get started.
For more information about creating Forums, please click here and watch the embedded video below.
Steps to design Forum ratings:
Turn on editing for the course.
Click Edit and select Edit settings for the Forum activity.
Scroll down and expand Rating. By default, the teacher role has the ability to rate posts and it is possible to give permission to a student role to rate in the forum.
Available aggregation methods available are explained below:
Average of ratings - The mean of all the ratings given to posts in that forum. This is especially useful with peer grading when there are a lot of ratings being made.
Count of ratings - The number of rated posts becomes the final grade. This is useful when the number of posts is important. Note that the total can not exceed the maximum grade allowed for the forum.
Maximum - The highest rating is returned as the final grade. This method is useful for emphasizing the best work from participants, allowing them to post one high-quality post as well as a number of more casual responses to others.
Minimum - The smallest rating is returned as the final grade. This method promotes a culture of high quality for all posts.
Sum - All the ratings for a particular user are added together. Note that the total is not allowed to exceed the maximum grade for the forum.
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