Recent Updates

  • Updated on: Dec 21, 2020

    How do I create a new forum?

    The Forum tool is organized by Forums, Topics, and Conversations.  

    • A Forum is a mandatory category or grouping for topics.  There may be more than one Forum in the course or project site.  
    • Topics are required within Forums in order for site participants to be able to post, read, and reply to messages.  
    • Conversations are messages or threads of discussion posted within a Topic.
  • Updated on: Dec 21, 2020

    What is the Forums tool?

    The Forums tool allows instructors or site leaders to create an unlimited number of discussion forums, and is integrated closely with other tools such as Resources and Gradebook.

    A Forum is a mandatory category or grouping for topics. Topics, which are created within forums, are where participants can post conversations. A Conversation is the thread of messages in which participants post their contributions. A conversation can be created by instructors or students inside of a topic.

    Some the features in the Forums tool include:

    • Grading: Interactions can be assigned a point value and sent to the gradebook with comments.
    • Availability dates: Forums and topics can be released according to specified dates.
    • Moderation: Instructors can choose to moderate messages posted to topics.
    • Counts of unread posts at a glance: On your site's Home or Overview page, you can see how many unread messages or posts you have in both Messages and Forums. From Home, you can see these totals for all sites in which you are enrolled.
    • Email notifications: Site members can elect to receive no email notification, notification for all new postings in a site, or notification for responses to conversations they've posted in. The default is to receive notifications about new postings in conversations to which you have contributed.
    • Statistics: Forum statistics are available for site owners to determine the participation level of individual participants. You can also read all of a particular participant's posts using this feature.
    • Post before reading option: The site owner (or another participant with the appropriate role) can enable participants to submit their posts to a topic before they have permission to read the responses of others.
    • Group awareness: Site leaders can change forum and topic settings in combination with predefined groups to allow or deny access to specific discussions per group.
    • Direct link to individual messages: Site leaders can copy a direct link to individual messages to use elsewhere.
    • Composing messages: A rich-text editor allows rich text, plain text, and HTML editing. You can add attachments to any message by linking to files or web links in Resources.
    • Quoted text: Use the Insert Original Text option to insert the previous post into your response.
    • Email the author of a message: Site leaders can directly email the author of a posting from within the Forums tool.

    Note: A forum with the name of the site and a topic titled "General Discussion" are created by default.

  • Updated on: Dec 21, 2020

    What is the External Tool (LTI)?

    The External Tool (LTI) allows you to include tools that support the IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability standard in your sites. TheExternal Tool (LTI) launch protocol securely sends user, site, and role information to the external tool using the OAuth (www.oauth.net) security mechanism.

    The site owner or the system administrator can configure this tool. If the system administrator pre-configures an External Tool, it appears in the list of tools like any other tool that can be added to the site by the site owner via Edit Tools in Site Info.

    For more information or assistance, please contact your local support team. For more details on the technical aspects of the IMS LTI standard, go to www.imsglobal.org.

  • Updated on: Dec 21, 2020

    What is the Email Archive tool?

    The Email Archive tool allows site managers to specify an alias email address which essentially serves as a listserv for the site. By default, email you send to the site email address is copied to the email addresses of all site participants and owners. All email messages sent to your site's email address are stored in the Email Archive. You can use any email program to send mail to the email address listed at the top of your Email Archive page.

    Site members can use Preferences in My Workspace to choose how often they want to receive email sent to the site's email address: either as it is sent, or in digest mode, with all posts for the day sent in a single email message.

    Note: You cannot use Email Archive to send mail to particular individuals. To send messages to individual participants or a group, use either the Messages tool (for internal course mail) or the Email tool (for external institutional mail).

  • Updated on: Dec 21, 2020

    How do I view Email Archive messages?

  • Note: You cannot use Email Archive to send mail to particular individuals. To send messages to individual participants or a group, use either the Messages tool (for internal course mail) or the Email tool (for external institutional mail).