The Cambridge Online Dictionary (http://dictionary.cambridge.org) defines a forum as a situation or meeting in which people can talk about a problem or matter. Traditionally, a forum was a physical place where people could join together and share ideas (think of the Romans). Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, people don't even need to be on the same continent to discuss things in this way!
Forums are one of the most important features you will use for socializing. Group members are able to talk about a topic and can comment on each other's ideas or suggestions.
Mahara groups give you the ability to add forums, allowing your group members to discuss any issues if they would like to. Each forum can have lots of users in it — all of them can make posts. Posts are simply a text comment, and they can be used to ask questions or to respond to elements of a discussion. Each group can have more than one forum, each with a different topic.
Let's go back to Janet and see what ideas she has for how she can use forums in her Clinical Trials group.
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Janet Norman from PI Inc. thinks: | |
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We know how important it is for our clinical trials to be conducted in a legal and moral way. To help with this, it would be great to get a legal and ethical discussion forum going where our experts can talk about latest legislation and ethical issues that are relevant to the way we conduct our clinical trials. |
The forum that Janet has suggested is great for gathering information from different users in one place.
Here is what Neil from Training for Work thinks about forums.
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Neil from Training for Work thinks: | |
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We are coming to the end of a program for some of our learners. It would be great if we could get a discussion going on the users' experience of using Mahara for reflective learning. A course experience forum in the course group would be perfect for this, so that the users can let us know what they think of the online and offline elements of our training program — and suggest what improvements we can make next time we run it. |
Hopefully, now you may have got some ideas about the different kinds of forum that you may want to have in your own group. You could also look at the mahara.org forums for some inspiration as there is lots of activity there.
Now, let's go ahead and see how you can set up a group forum.