This is probably more a feature request than a question. The most frequent request I keep getting from my faculty is the abilty from within a forum posting to directly communicate with a student with an email in context.
What they would like to see is "Private Reply" added to Edit | Delte | Reply choices we have as we read and assess postings.
If you click on the name of the sender/student, you get taken to their profile. Under the profile image there is a 'Send Message' link which can be used to send a private message to the individual. For the sake of one extra click is a separate plugin needed?
Or is your suggestion that the general forum could be able to be split into private discussions - In which case perhaps a different activity type rather than forums needs to be investigated as surely the point of a forum is for open discussions that everyone can contribute to? If private/direct communications are needed then possibly a forum is not the appropriate activity anyway? Unless I am misunderstanding your question?
Richard, good suggestion and yes, I have thought of that and it is a good means for reaching the email address of the poster quickly, but you simply get a message with an addressee, no subject and no context associated with the discussion posting. I could copy and paste, but that again is more work. In the past I've used a number of different forum tools, and almost all allowed for the "private" response.
The reason for a personal/private reply is to support conversations that sometimes can be controversial and full of emotion. Not always does a posting happen in a manner that fits the direction you had in mind with a learning objective. Yes, I can indicate that in my reply to the student, shared with the class, but sometimes it's simply not appropriate to "call out" or to guide a student while all others in the discussion participate. Instead, I would rather provide some individual insight to guide the student towards a more balanced perception, and then a follow-up posting.
I hope this makes some sense. I teach and work with faculty, as well as students, in higher education and in Business Management / Marketing. We're very focused on critical thinking as a degree outcome. To get to where we think we need to be, challenging discussion questions are the norm. Responses are not always as insightful as we would like them to be and personal guidance is essential as we work to strengthen the learning experience.
Hi Bruce,
Every post in a forum has its own unique url (e.g. http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=188802#p821867 ) In my googlemail this is the link you get where it says 'See this post in context'.
If you were to paste this link into the private message (as teh first line perhaps), that should give subject and context for the message in relation to what is being discussed.
Richard
I agree. It is very helpful to be able to quickly reply privately to a student inside a particular discussion, so it is clear that you are responding to that specific discussion.
+1 for Richard's suggestion. Simply click the said user's profile and send them a private 1:1 instant message. Check Moodle Tracker to see if there is an issue already or feel free to suggest this as a feature improvement.
We had a meeting of all our Moodle teachers yesterday & I got this exact same request. So if there's a place to vote for this feature, I'd happily do so!
Gina, the tracker item is here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-22077
-Derek
This feature has been requested at our institution too. It would be great if available. Another enhancement would be the use of Rubrics in the forum. Currently it does not seem one can apply a rubric.
