The Forum activity serves as a digital platform where students and faculty can interact by sharing their thoughts through comments. Utilizing a forum can play a crucial role in fostering effective communication and building a sense of community in an online setting. In addition to text, forum posts offer the flexibility to incorporate images, videos, and audio, enhancing the potential for collaborative engagement with fellow students.
How to post to a forum:
- Log in to the CLE (cle.ucsf.edu) and navigate to a course
- Click the forum link in a CLE course
- Click on the Add a new discussion topic button to add a new thread inside of the forum or click the Discussion title link and click the Reply link to reply to a previous post
- Compose the forum post
- Type in a subject and content of the message – these are both required and it makes sense to keep the subject brief (like in an email) and to word it so that other people know what your discussion topic is about
- Choose to receive or not receive notifications for new posts to the forum, unless the subscription mode has been forced by the faculty and everyone will receive notifications for new posts. If you have questions about forum subscriptions, contact the course faculty to inquire about forum subscription settings
- Add a file as an attachment to the post if you choose or required. You can also add photos or videos to a forum post by selecting the image picker
then selecting the photo or video from your computer files.
- You will now see a message giving you 30 minutes in which you can edit or delete your posting. After that time, the post will appear automatically in the form and is emailed to everybody who subscribed to the forum.
How do I reply to, star, or unsubscribe to posts from the forum discussion page?
- Navigate to a discussion forum post
- Click on the name of the student you intend to reply to
- Click Reply (1 in image) underneath the post.
- Write your reply (2) in the text box
- Click submit (3)
- Under the reply options, click Advanced (4) or 'Use advanced editor and additional options' if you want to format your text, add an image, or add an attachment.
- Click the Permalink (5) under a post, which generates a permanent link to that post. This can be useful if you want to share or reference another post in your own post.
- In the Settings drop-down menu (6) next to a discussion forum, you can choose to Star this discussion or Unsubscribe from this discussion.
Forum notifications
Depending on how the faculty has configured the forum, you may be forcibly subscribed to the forum. This means you will be unable to unsubscribe yourself from forum notifications and will receive an email every time someone posts to the forum. If you have questions about forum subscriptions, contact the course faculty to inquire about forum subscription settings.
Depending on the subscription mode used for the forum, you may be able to unsubscribe from the forum by clicking the Unsubscribe me from this forum link located in the Administration block on the left side of the page.
If you are unable to unsubscribe to a forum but want to receive fewer forum notification emails from the CLE, you can update your CLE email digest settings. Email digest settings are configured in your CLE profile (see instructions below).
To update how many emails you receive from CLE forums:
- Log in to the CLE (cle.ucsf.edu)
- Click your name on the user menu from the top-right corner of CLE and click Preferences
- While on the Preferences page and click Forum Preferences
- In Forum preferences, you can configure how often you receive emails from the CLE using the Email Digest Type drop-down menu
- Choose from the following:
- No Digest: You will receive one e-mail per forum post
- Complete: You will receive one digest e-mail per day containing the complete contents of each forum post
- Subjects: You will receive one digest e-mail per day containing just the subject of each forum post
- From the Forum auto-subscribe drop-down, configure whether or not to automatically subscribe to forums that you post to.
- In the Forum Tracking drop-down, Select Yes: highlight new posts for me and posts will be highlighted in the following places: Dashboard, Course page, Within the forum itself, and In forum discussion threads
- Click the Save changes to save your preferences.
For more information, you can refer to the Student Orientation to the New CLE.