In this article, you can read which general settings are possible for the Discussion tool and which settings are possible for a specific forum/topic.
Table of Contents
How do I change the general settings for Discussions?
In settings you can choose in what way topics and posts are displayed, the default manner of rating posts and if you want to automatically subscribe to your own threads. These settings mostly influence only your own view of Discussions.
- Go to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
- Click on Discussions. You will now see the Discussions homepage.
- Click on Settings (below navbar).
Below Personal Settings you can change how you want to display the discussions. These settings are personal and will not change how the settings for other users.
- Display Settings: check the box Always show the Discussion List pane if you want to see an overview of all of the discussion forums and topics on the left hand side of the screen if you click on a topic or thread. Check the box Display deleted posts if you want to see deleted posts when you search within the discussion tool.
- Default View: select whether you want to see the titles of the posts below each other and open the posts yourself (Grid View) or if you want to view all of the posts in their entirety below each other (Reading View).
- Reply Settings: check this box if you want include the original post in your reply.
- Subscription Settings: Check this box if you want to automatically be subscribed to a thread that you created yourself.
Below Org Unit Settings you can select if participants in a post can rate discussions and if so: whether this rating is based on stars or via an upvote/downvote system.
- No Ratings: nobody can give a rating.
- Five-Star Rating Scheme: participants can rate the discussion posts on a scale from one to five.
- Up Vote / Down Vote Rating Scheme: Participants in the discussion can rate posts up or down.
- Up Vote Only Rating Scheme: participants in the discussion can only up vote posts.
In the settings for the default rating scheme you decide the default when creating a new topic. However, you can always overrule this setting when creating a new topic.
Next after the Default Rating Scheme you will see the Availability Condition Defaults, where you can set up when is the discussion board or topic will be available to students.
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Before Start Dates: In here there are 3 options to chose from:
- Visible with access restricted before start: this means that the student will be able to see the board or topic but unable to access it until the start date
- Visible with submission restricted before start: with this option, the student will be able to access the forum and topic but will be unable to make a post or a reply to any post before the start date
- Hidden before start: this means that the forum and topics will be hidden from students until the start date
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After End Dates: In here there are 3 options to chose from
- Visible with access restricted after end: Means that the forum and topics will be visible to the students after the end date, but they will not be able to access it
- Visible with submission restricted after end: With this option, the forum and topics will remain visible and accessible to the students after the end date but they cannot longer make posts or reply to other posts within the topic after the end date.
- Hidden after end: This means that the forum and topic will become hidden from the students after the end date.
The Grid View Settings allows you to adjust what you get to see in the grid:
- Check the Topic Descriptions box if you want to see a short description of the topic. NB: this description is visible for all participants to the discussion!
- Select Threaded if you want to see all posts in a thread below each other. Select Unthreaded if you want to see all the posts in chronological order.
- Check the Show the preview pane box if you prefer all the posts to open in the bottom half of the screen instead of in a pop-up.
- Check the Show the search bar box if you want to have a search bar available which you can use to find a specific post.
- Check the Post ID box if you want to show the ID of a post.
- Check the Org Identified ID box to show the ID of the author of a post.
- Check the Limit the number of characters of the subject to display in the post box if you do not want that long titles of a post are displayed in their entirety. Enter the maximum amount of characters to be displayed in the box.
Click Save and Close to save your adjustments and return to the Discussions homepage.
How do I add restrictions to a discussion forum?
The Restrictions tab allows you to create conditions for the availability and/or visibility of discussion forums in the following ways:
- Availability is used to state a start and/or end date for the time frame a forum/topic is visible for students.
- Release Conditions are used to determine under which conditions the forum is available (for example: students can only see the forum if they have achieved a score of 80% or higher on a certain quiz. You can add multiple release conditions to a single forum).
- Group and Section Restrictions are used to determine to whom the forum is available (for example: only students from Tutorialgroup 1 are able to see the forum).
How to add restrictions:
- Go to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
- Click on Discussions; you will now see the discussions homepage.
- Click on arrow next to the Forum title to which you want to add restrictions.
- Click on Edit Forum.
- Click on Availability Dates & Conditions.
It is not possible to alter restrictions if students have already started discussions.
Restrictions on a Forum take precedents over restrictions on a Topic. For example, this means that a topic is only visible for students if and only if the forum is visible for students.
Availability
- When creating a new topic/forum, the standard setting will be that it is visible to the student. Check the left side of the box to make it invisible.
- If the topic can only be visible within a certain time frame, you can enter the dates here. As soon as you fill in a date an extra option will appear ("Visible with access restricted") where you can decide what will happen with the topic outside of the set time frame. You can have the topic be invisible, visible but no submissions can be made (read-only), or visible but not accessable.
Release Conditions
3. When adding a release condition, you can choose between adding an existing one, or creating a new condition. Once you added multiple conditions you can choose whether all conditions must be met, or a single one.
Group Restrictions
The option Manage Restrictions will give you the option the choose for which groups the topic will be visible. Available groups will become visible under "Select who will see this topic". Note that you can also restrict access to certain groups via Course Tools - Discussions - tab Group and Section Restrictions. This tab will give you an overview of restrictions per Group category and forum.