Student Help Centre

Students may be required to participate in forum discussions in some units, through the course of their study, whether for assessment purposes or general student interaction and support.  
This is the forum icon: 
At 3pm each day, all forum posts made in sites that the student has access to, over the last 24 hours, are sent to the student's email inbox, as the Forum daily digest.  Students need to open this digest regularly, to read any forum posts.  Note that it is better to click on the link: See post in context, especially if you wish to reply to that post.   This will take you to the unit site, and the forum, where the post originated. 

Receiving notification of forum posts in your Forum Daily Digest means you are subscribed to that forum.  You can change your preferences:

• 1. so that you receive each form post separately as it is made;  and/or:
  
• 2. so that you no longer receive notification of a particular forum - you will still be able to access the forum in the unit site and see all posts, but you just won't get email alerts about posts.  See further here on how to change your preferences.
  

There are different types of forums:

• On every subject site, there is a Announcements forum (in some sites it may still read News Forum, which the lecturer will use to send messages to all the students in that unit.   Students cannot make a post themselves in this forum. The last few news post will also be displayed in the Latest Announcements block on the right hand side of the page.
  
• There may be a student introductory forum, or interaction forum, especially if there are online students in the class.
  

• There may be forums where students are required to participate in discussion as part of assessment work, although that is not very common in VET Units.  Your lecturer will let you know if that is the case.  These forums tend to be one of 2 types:
  
• General forum for discussion: all students can post a new discussion topic while the discussion is in process, and can reply to any other student.  Usually students can start more than one new discussion.  Students can see other students' posts before they have made their own post.
• Question and answer forum:  each student needs to respond to some question/s or task, set by the lecturer, before they can access other student's answers/posts.
  

Important: all students and lecturer/s in a particular class/subject/site can see all posts that are made in the forums in that site.  If you wish to send a message to one particular student, see the next page:  Online messages.

To make a forum post:

1. Click on the relevant forum link in your subject site.
   
2. To make a new post:  click on the: Add a new discussion topic button. 
   
3. Enter a brief subject for your post, and enter your text in the Message box.  Please do not copy and paste directly from Word; click here if you wish to copy and paste text already written. 
   
4. Click Post to forum button.  Note that you have 30 minutes in which to edit your forum post; after that time you cannot edit it. 
   
5. To edit your post within the 30 minutes, click on the subject, i.e. the link under Discussion column, can click the Edit button to the bottom right of the post.   Note that you can also Delete it during this 30 minutes. 
   
6. Click Save changes after you have finished editing. 
   
7. Note that it is good practice to always read through your post, after making it, to check for spelling, grammatical errors, etc. while within the 30 minute time frame.
   
8. If you do need to change what you have written after the 30 minutes editing time, you will need to contact your lecturer, who can edit it for you, if they are willing to do that, and you have good reason for needing to change it. 
   
9. To reply to a post made by another student, or your lecturer:  click on the subject under Discussion column.
   
10. Click the Reply button, at bottom right of post, and enter your text in the Message box.
    
11. Click Post to forum button.
    
12. Again, you have 30 minutes to edit this.

Important:  if you wish your post to be received by other students that day, make sure you post it before 2.30pm.  There will be the 30 minutes editing time lapse, and then all forum posts go out to students' email accounts at 3pm, so if a post is made after 2.30pm on a given day it will not go out until 3pm the next day.  It will be visible in the forum itself, after 30 minutes, but the students and the lecturer won't necessarily know that you have made this post until the next day.