Ask & Share Forum is designed to allow students to participate in the announcement forum. This forum has many of the same settings of the Announcement forum, but it should also have special permissions set for students to reply to an announcement you have posted in the forum, and to ask their own questions. We compare this to a student raising their hand and asking a question in class.
We have experienced some issues with these permissions not being imported correctly so we encourage you to check these permissions if you plan on utilizing the Ask & Share Forum in your course.