Create New Forums and Topics in Desire2Learn

Posted On December 14, 2012
Categories Desire2Learn, Support, Teaching and Managing a Course in Desire2Learn
Associated Service Desire2Learn > For Faculty
  1. Click on your Course to access the course homepage.
  2. Select Discussions from the horizontal navigation bar.
  3. Click on New Forum to create a folder that will be home to one or more discussion topics.
  4. In the New Forumdialog box:
    1. Enter a title for your new forum in the “Title” field
    2. Enter a description in the “Description” field
    3. Check Allow anonymous messages to enable that feature, or choose approve messages before they can be posted.
    4. Choose whether to hide or show your forum. You can also set a range of dates in which your forum will be visible to students. In addition, you can lock or unlock your forum.
      NOTE: When you lock a forum, it will remain visible, but student cannot post new content to it. You can choose to lock or unlock it only within a specific date range too. 
    5. Click Save and add topic to go directly into the topic set-up screen.
  5. In the New Topic dialog box:
    NOTE: Desire2Learn will assign the forum you have just created. You can change that by clicking on the drop-down list, in the forum field and selecting another forum. Or you can click on New Forum to start from scratch.

    1. Choose the Forum you want the topic to be in
    2. Enter a Title for your topic in the “Title” field
    3. Enter a Description in the “Description” field
    4. Check Allow anonymous messages to enable that feature, or choose approve messages before they can be posted.
      NOTE: This option can be the same option you have set for your forum, but does not have to be. This means that you can have an unlocked and visible forum, but you can lock and hide individual topics within that forum. 
    5. Choose whether to hide or show your forum. You can also set a range of dates in which your forum will be visible to students. In addition, you can lock or unlock your forum.
      NOTE: When you lock a forum, it will remain visible, but student cannot post new content to it. You can choose to lock or unlock it only within a specific date range too. 
    6. Click Save.

NOTE: From the Restrictions, Assessment and Objectives tab, you can also restrictions, or fill in your assessment criteria such as assigning grade items, maximum score, and adding a rubric. Lastly, you can connect these with previously specified Learning Objectives.