• Discussions
• Structure Discussions
• Topics and threads
• Reply to a post
• Where do I find comments?
• Rate thread

Lecturers can create a discussion forum within the course. Here, as a student, you have the opportunity to hand in assignments, discuss, ask questions and discuss with your fellow students.

• Navigate to Course Tools in the navigation bar of your course.
• Click Discussions. You land on the Discussions homepage.
• On the Discussions homepage you can see an overview of all discussion forums and topics that the instructor has created for the course. This is the Discussions List

Discussions are made up of three different parts:

1. In a discussion forum you can discuss with your fellow students.
2. You do this within one or more themes (topics).
3. You can create one or more threads within the topic.

A topic within a forum is the place where you can post and read messages. Within this topic you can then create a thread: a main message that others can respond to with a post. You create a thread as follows:

• On the Discussions homepage, click on a topic. You will see the description of the topic and all the threads that have already been posted.
• Click Start a New Thread.

1. Enter a subject.
2. Add the text, for example a question you want to ask or the reason why you are creating the thread.
3. Below the text field you will see the number of words you have already typed.
4. Check Post as Anonymous to post anonymously.
5. When you create a thread, you automatically receive notifications (email notifications) when someone replies to your thread. If you don't want this, uncheck Subscribe to this thread.
6. Click Add attachments to add a file. Then click Upload and locate the appropriate file.
7. Click Post.

Within a topic, you have the option to respond to other participants' threads (for example, you can provide feedback on an assignment posted by a student or answer a question posed by another student or the instructor).

• On the Discussions homepage, click on the desired topic.
• Click on the title of the thread you want to reply to. Which notifications can I turn on and off and how do I link notifications to my e-mail?
• Click Reply to Thread.

1. Post your comment to the thread in the HTML editor.
2. If necessary, click on Add original post text to add the post you are responding to.
3. When you reply to a thread, you automatically receive notifications (email notifications) when someone replies to the thread. If you don't want this, uncheck Subscribe to this thread.
4. Optionally, add an attachment by clicking Add Attachments. Then click Upload.
5. Click Post.

You can also tag someone in your comment.

• Type the @ symbol and immediately after it a few letters of the name of the person you want to tag. All people in the course whose first or last name begins with those letters appear in a list.
• Click on the one you want to tag.

The person you tag will receive a notification and an email from the tagging, you will also receive a notification in the Pulse app. If someone tags you, you will also receive a notification with your Subscription Alerts in the top right corner of the minibar. This looks like this:

When someone replies to your thread, you can see it in several ways.

• Below your thread it says Unread in bold. The number above indicates how many unread comments there are. Click Unread to read the comment(s).

You can also choose to receive notifications for Discussions. You can read how to set up notifications in the article Which notifications can I switch on and off and how do I link notifications to my e-mail? You can also set these notifications in Discussions.

1. On the Discussions home page, click Subscriptions.
2. Select which notifications you want to receive.

The teacher can set that you can rate the posts of other students. Valuation can be done in the following ways:

• Five-Star Rating Scheme: Give your fellow students one to five stars for their post.
• Up Vote/Down Vote Rating Scheme: give a post a positive or negative vote.
• Up Vote Only Rating Scheme: Only give a post a positive vote.

With a five-star system, you can click on a number of stars of your choice at Ratings. You can always adjust or remove your rating by clicking on a different number of stars or the circle with a line. You can vote on both the thread's post and the comments.

• Click the plus icon to cast a positive vote on a thread.
• Click the mini icon to cast a negative vote on a thread.

You can adjust or undo your rating by clicking the plus or minus button again. You have one vote per post.

If you can only vote positive, you do this by clicking plus. You can adjust or undo your rating by clicking plus again.