Course Connect - For Students: Forums

Please note that you will only have 30 minutes to edit your replies or topics after posting them to the forum. After 30 minutes you cannot edit your posts. 

To post in an existing discussion topic or to read a forum, first click on the forum assignment. You will be brought to the following page:

Next, click on the discussion you would like to read or post in. You will be brought to the following page, where you can click on the 'reply' button (highlighted in red).

Type your reply to the topic or prompt. If you would like to see the advanced text editor, click the Advanced link at the bottom right corner of the reply box. See the Text Editor box on the right for more details.

Sometimes your professor may ask you to create a new discussion topic, instead of responding to an existing topic. If there are no discussion topics in the Forum yet, you will see the following page:

To add a new topic, select Add Discussion Topic. You will then see the text box pictured below:

You can use the text box to enter and edit your reply. Be sure to click Post to Forum when you are done. To read more about the text editing features, see the Text Editor box to the right. 

An Open Forum operates in much the same way as a regular forum. Two notable differences are that the icon for the Open Forum is different, and the most recent post may appear on the main course page. 

You will access an Open Forum the same way that you access a regular forum, by clicking on the activity link from your course page. Once inside the forum, you can view and reply to posts or create a new discussion topic, depending on your instructor's settings.  View the Forum instructions on the left for more details about replying and posting.

Your instructor may choose for the open forum to be anonymous. If they enable this setting, your posts will automatically be anonymous unless you click on the 'reveal' option below your reply (please see the box below highlighted in red).

If you select the link highlighted in blue in the above screenshot, you will be taken to the advanced text editor (see Text Editor below for more information). 

Below is the text editor you can access in either forum type by selecting the Advanced option at the bottom right of the reply box. 

The text editor contains basic editing features like bold, italic, numbered lists, and hyperlinks. It also allows you to insert media like images and video, and record audio or video up to five minutes long directly into Course Connect. The text editor will allow you to undo and redo your work, adjust your font color, insert special characters and emojis, create tables, and much more! You can use the ellipses icon in the blue square in the screenshot above to expand your editing options.