A moodle course can have multiple Forum discussion areas for different use. When you open a Forum discussion, it usually includes a description on the area’s purpose. For example it can be meant for getting to know other students, returning a course exercise or giving course feedback.
Discussions can be found from the Forum as discussion chains where the topics and writers of the discussions can be seen on the Forum starting page. Topics are organized so that the topic with the last sent message are on top. You can open a discussion by clicking a topic title.
Writing a Forum message
You can start a new discussion by clicking Add a new discussion topic. Mandatory information needed are Subject and Message. It is also possible to add an Attachment. Message is sent from the Post to forum button.
After sending a message, you have 30 minutes to Edit the message, for example to fix spelling errors. After this, the message is locked and cannot be edited. At the same time, moodle sends your message by email to everyone who have subscribed to the Topic.
Answering a message
You can answer another message by opening the message and clicking Reply on the bottom left.
Subscribing to a Forum topic (ordering messages to email)
Students are usually able to subscribe to Forum topics from which they want to receive message to email.
When you have opened one of the Forum areas from the course front page, you will find a gear icon from the right side of the screen. By clicking the gear, you open up a menu from which you can see what kind of subscription settings are on use. If it reads Forced subscription, you will receive emails automatically. If it reads Optional subscription or Auto subscription, you can choose whether you want to receive the emails or not. If below these is a link Subscribe to this forum, you can order the messages to your email by clicking it.
Forum subscription can be cancelled from the same place where you order a subscription. On the Forum front page click the gear icon and behind it the link Unsubscribe from this forum. After this you no longer receive emails from messages to this Forum. This setting is tied to the specific Forum, so you can still subscribe/unsubscribe to other Forum areas. If the teacher has Forced the subscription you cannot change the setting by yourself.
Instructions for writing long Forum posts
If you are writing a longer text to moodle, for example along reflecting forum post, it is advisable to write the text first in another program, where you can occasionally save the text. After writing the text, you can bring it to moodle with copy and paste tools. Moodle does not have an option to save the text mid of writing, so for example a crashing of a web browser would result to you losing the text. In addition, DigiCampus moodle has a four hour timeout, meaning that if the writing is for some reason paused the text will be lost after the time frame closes.