Toolkit

5. - How to contribute to a forum

Receiving a forum message
You can receive a forum message in two ways:

• in your email inbox (messages in a forum will be redirected to your email inbox if the forum has been set up to do this – this is called being "subscribed" to a forum)
• when you are logged into your course page and read through the messages in the forums

Replying to a forum message
If you receive a forum message in your email inbox, please follow these steps.

1. The message may appear in your inbox looking like this (email in MS Outlook):

To reply to this message use the Reply link at the bottom of the window. When you click on this link you’ll be asked to log into the OURVLE course page if you have not already logged in. Try not to use the reply function in your email software, as this will not reply to the whole group – just to the individual who sent the message.

You can view the entire discussion before you decide to reply. Click on See this post in context to go directly to the forum in your course page where the discussion takes place. You will be asked to log in if you are not already in the OURVLE course page.

If you are in your forum page and looking at the different forum discussion you may want to reply to an ongoing discussion. Open the discussion topic by clicking on the discussion description.

If you want to reply, look for the Reply link in the bottom of the message. Clicking on this link will take you to a page where you can type in your message, in the same way as entering a new discussion. (See below:))

When you are in the OURVLE course page you can:

1. Find the online forum where the discussion you are interested in is taking place. The icon for an online forum looks like this:

2. Click on the description of the forum next to the icon:

To add a new discussion topic (if you are raising a new point in the discussion, for example, rather than continuing a current conversation), click on the Add a new discussion topic button.

Type in the name of your Subject and then insert your message in the main textbox called Message.

Note: You can use the editing buttons shown above to format your message. Some will be very familiar to you, such as B for bold, options to use bullet points, and so on. You might want to play around with the various options.

When you are happy with your message, scroll down the screen and note these options:

The Subscription field allows you to choose whether or not you want messages to be copied to your email inbox. Click the down arrow and select the option you want.
You can also add an attachment, by browsing for your saved file. Click on the Browse button to do this.

Finally, when you are happy with your posting, select Post to forum.