Viewing forums

To see the list of forums for your site, click Forums in your site's menubar.

Note: The Forums tool is pre-populated with a default forum and topic.

Each forum appears in an enclosed box with its title and short description displayed (if created). If a full description of the forum exists, click View Full Description to view it.

Beneath the forum title, topics are listed by title and include a short description (if created). The following details also appear:

• A count of total messages
• A count of unread messages
• If a topic is moderated, the word "Moderated" will be displayed.
• If a topic has an attachment, its filename will be displayed. Click the filename to open the attachment or save it to your computer.

Clicking the title of any forum will open an isolated view of a particular forum and its topics.

Clicking the title of any topic will display conversations (i.e., threads of related messages) for that particular topic. If a conversation has more than one message, use the arrow to the left to view all messages in that conversation.

To expand all conversations, click Display Message Content. Click Mark All As Read in any given conversation to automatically mark all the messages as read; if all conversations are expanded, Mark All As Read will mark all messages in the topic as read. You can also manually mark each message as read by clicking the envelope beside the message. Click a message to also show how many people have read it.

To open a printable version of the messages, click the printer icon at the top. A new window will open; click Send To Printer to print the messages, and then click Close Window to return to the message screen.

Clicking the title of a conversation will open an isolated view of its individual messages. Each individual conversation displays a count of total messages and unread messages. Use the View drop-down list to change the display of messages.

Those with appropriate permissions (e.g., instructors) may see the content of all posts by a particular participant using the statistics function; see Participation statistics.

To open an individual message, click its subject.

In moderated forums, if you have the appropriate permissions to approve messages, you can see messages awaiting your approval by clicking Pending Messages; see Moderating messages in a forum. If you're not a moderator, you'll see "PENDING" beside a message awaiting moderation.