Introduction
While the frequency and amount of your participation in a Moodle discussion forum is determined by your professor, here are some helpful tips to consider to maximize your participation:
Why Participate in a Discussion Forum?
- Reply to a question prompt from your professor
- Share a reflection or analysis of the course material
- Have a discussion with classmates around a topic or resource (a reading, film, etc)
- Ask questions or get help from you professor
Don’t Lose Your Work!
Compose your message as a draft in a Microsoft Word Document or Google Docs to prevent potential loss of your responses in case your browser session times out. It’s always a good idea to save your text before you submit anything on Moodle, so you have a back-up copy.
Getting Started
Step 1: Add your discussion entry
After clicking on the discussion post, click “Add a new discussion topic” to begin your post.
Add a relevant and brief subject line and paste your response in the message field.
Step 2 : Add an attachment
You can click “Advanced” to add an attachment to your discussion post, such as a Word Document, PDF, or image file. Once on “Advanced,” you can drag and drop files from your computer to add them to your post.
If the discussion forum requires an attached media file, make sure to include a file extension (e.g., .doc, .xls, .pdf, etc.) so that others have access to your file. The maximum file attachment size for Moodle is 2GB, and your professor may have selected an even smaller maximum file attachment size for their discussion forum. If your file exceeds the maximum size, then you will need to upload it to OneDrive or another Cloud location and provide a link to the file.
In the “Message” field, you can use the down arrow (highlighted in red below) to facilitate formatting text and adding different media types. Clicking this will reveal a toolbar with options such as text alignment, indentation, sub and superscripts, the equation editor, the html editor, etc.
Step 3 : Publish your discussion
When finished, click “Post to forum”. After clicking this, you will have 30 minutes to make changes (edit or delete content) before the post is locked and then visible to members of the forum.
