Teaching online guidebook

Discussion forums

The General discussion forum icon forum icon  is in the communication hub in the FLO starter site. The starter site also provides an optional forum in the assessment hub for addressing student questions about assessment in your topic. 

In the topic there may be overall assessment of weekly forums (eg a Non-Graded Pass), or a one-off forum assessment. Criteria for marking may include posts, posts and responses, or documents/other materials posted to the forum. Think about the purpose of your forum/s prior to set up.

Some options

If you want to assess forum participation, you could:

  • set up a forum with ratings which automatically creates a grade item for the forum in the Gradebook
  • setup a gradable forum using points, rubrics or marking guides
  • add a forum as a manual grade item to the Gradebook and enter the grades directly for that item
  • set a forum to Q&A forum type, which means students post before they can see others' posts. You could use this type of forum to get students to 'mark' their own contribution (formative assessment)
  • set up a forum for group work, either for formative or summative assessment (this could be a working space for students to develop a product)

How to