3.1.1 Set forum type: Standard forum or Single simple discussion

1. Introduction

Forum is an activity where students and teachers can participate in written discussions and exchange ideas, comments, questions and answers. Forum can accommodate various conversations. Imagine situations perhaps familiar from a face-to-face instruction:

• at the beginning of the course when participants are asked to introduce themselves and explain about their background;
• during the course when a facilitator asks focused questions to trigger deeper thinking about the problem; 
• at the end of the course when debriefing a specific activity.  

In an online environment, these exemplar conversations could be conducted in a Forum. Moodle has four basic Forum types. In this Lesson, we will focus on two of them:

• A single simple discussion - A single topic discussion developed on one page, which is useful for short focused discussions. Teacher only can create a discussion, and students can only reply.
  
• Standard forum for general use - An open forum where anyone can start a new topic at any time. This is the best general-purpose forum.

Let's see now how a Forum can support different learning moments.