FAQs About Forums and Blogs

• My students say they can't post in the forum. How do I fix this?

  There are two possible explanations for why your student(s) can't post. First, do you have the Forum set to Visible Groups or Separate Groups? If so, the student(s) are likely not in a group. And if they are not in a group, they cannot post. Also, did you set the appropriate grouping? If so, it might be that the groups are not associated with that grouping. For either, please see our help guide on how to Create Groups and Groupings.

  The other possible explanation is that you set your forum type to the Q&A Forum type, but did not post any questions. When using a Q&A Forum type you, the instructor, must post first. You are posting the "question." Students then come in and reply to your question with their "answer" (hence the name Q&A). Students cannot post questions, so if there are no questions posted, students are unable to post in the forum. Question posts are not brought over when importing or restoring course content, so they will need to be re-posted each term. Please see our help guide on using the Q&A forum. If you are using groups with your Q&A forum you must post the question to each group. If you do not post the question to the groups, students can see your post, but cannot reply. Please see our help guide on using the Q&A forum with groups.

• When I try to post in a forum it gives me the message "Error writing to database." What do I do?

  This can happen for two reasons:

  1. Do you have any emojis in your text? Try removing them and see if you are then able to successfully post.
  2. Did you copy and paste your text from Word? If so, instead of just pasting your text in the main area, use the Paste from Word feature in the text editor toolbar. Review our help guide on how to paste from word.
• How can I quickly see which students have posted and which students have not?

  To see the forum participation for each student you will want to view the Forum Summary Report. For more information, please see our help guide on the Forum Summary Report.

• I have already graded my forum, but I want to change what it's worth (the max grade). Can I do that?

  Unfortunately if you have already graded the Forum the max grade cannot be changed. To change there are two options:

  1. Create a manual grade item set to the correct amount, manually enter the student grades there, and set the weight of the original forum to 0. Here is our help guide on how to add a manual grade item. Here is our help guide on how to manually enter grades.
  2. Create a category that uses Simple Weighted Mean for the Aggregation and has the max grade set to the correct amount. Put the forum into that category. The category will convert the incorrect grade to the correct grade. Here is our help guide on how to create a category.
• My students say they can't see their forum grade in the gradebook. Why not?

  Is the forum hidden on your course homepage? If a forum is hidden on the course homepage, it will also be hidden in the gradebook. From your course homepage, click on the three dots under the forum and click Show. The grade should then be visible in the gradebook.

  If it is visible on your course homepage, the grade might be stuck between hidden and visible. Go to the gradebook Setup page. For the forum click Edit and then Hide. Click Edit again and then Show. Resetting the visibility it in this way should make the grades visible.

• In the gradebook why do I see two columns for the same forum? One says "rating" at the end, the other says "whole forum."

  You can choose to grade a forum using Ratings or Whole Forum Grading. You will want to choose only one because if you enable both there will be two columns in the gradebook for that forum, one for each method. Hopefully you haven't yet entered grades, or have only entered grades for one method. If so:

  • To remove Whole Forum Grading: Go to the Whole Forum Grading section and change the Type to None. Save.
  • To remove Ratings: Go to the Ratings section and change the Aggregate Type to "No ratings." Save.

  If you have entered grades for for methods, the only method that can be removed is Ratings. Whole Forum Grading cannot be removed after you have entered any grades.

• My students say they can't see the intro/instructions for the OU Blog. How can I show it to them?
  Go into the settings and make sure the box for the setting "Show intro when posting" is checked. If it is not checked, students will not see the intro/instructions. If it is checked, students won't see the intro/instructions until they click "New blog post." If you want them to see the instructions before they click "New blog post" you will want to provide the instructions in a different area - perhaps a word doc or page added to the module the OU Blog is in.

Check out our other FAQs:

• FAQs About CC Basics
• FAQs About Course Setup
• FAQs About Course Management    
• FAQs About Resources
• FAQs About Assignments and Turnitin
• FAQs About Quizzes
• FAQs about Groups
• FAQs About Gradebook