Create a Forum Activity

Forum activities are generally used to create an online discussion place.

Enter your course and turn editing on.

Scroll to the section you want to add a forum to.

Click the corresponding Add an activity or resource link.

Set up the basics for your forum under the General section:

Set the Forum name
Enter a Description – we suggest putting directions, due dates, examples and grading information here.
Determine whether or not to Display description on page – if your above Description is rather long then this is probably not ideal.
Determine whether or not to Display recent posts on course page (Open forum only) – this will display the name, avatar, Discussion title, and time of posting of the most recent 5 posts made to this forum once folks have started posting.

Under the General section we’ll need to choose a Forum type from one of five options:

A single simple discussion (DEFAULT)
A single discussion topic which everyone can reply to (cannot be used with separate groups)
Each person posts one discussion
Each student can post exactly one new discussion topic, which everyone can then reply to
Q and A forum
Students must first post their perspectives before viewing other students’ posts
For more information about this forum type see this article on Q and A forums
Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format
An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time, and in which discussion topics are displayed on one page with “Discuss this topic” links
Standard forum for general use
An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time

By default, forums will be set for Optional Subscription which means students must opt in to get emails about new posts to a forum.

If you want to change this you can expand the Subscription section and change the Subscription mode to your desired setting.

NOTE: To find out more about Subscriptions in Moodle for students and staff see our Managing Forum Subscriptions article.

If applicable, set a Grade category to control where in your grade book this forum is applied.
NOTE: To learn more about the grade book and categories see our article on Moodle Gradebook Construction.
Under Ratings, set the Aggregate type, we suggest Sum of Ratings as it will total all given ratings a student has up to the points possible (extra credit will not happen here)
Set the Maximum grade value to the numerical Point value that you want this forum worth.

If applicable, set a Grade category to control where in your grade book this forum is applied.
NOTE: To learn more about the grade book and categories see our article on Moodle Gradebook Construction.
Under Whole Forum Grading, set the Type, we suggest Point
Set the Maximum grade value to the numerical Point value that you want this forum worth (extra credit will not happen here.)
OPTIONAL: Change the value of Grading method to Rubric if you’d like to grade forums with a rubric.

If applicable, set a Grade category to control where in your grade book this forum is applied.
NOTE: To learn more about the grade book and categories see our article on Moodle Gradebook Construction.
Set the Grade type to Manual
Set the Maximum grade value to the numerical Point value that you want this forum worth.
Set Grading method to Simple direct grading.

No grading is required.

OPTIONAL: if you want to disallow late work you can set the Restrict ratings to items with dates in this range setting.

This will NOT prevent students from posting after forum posts are due.
It will prevent the grader from applying Ratings to posts made outside of this time range.

Scroll to the bottom of the page.

Click the Save and display button to look over your new (Open) forum and ensure things look as expected.