(You know you've got it pretty bad when you start replying to yourself in forums.)
That twisty path in my last posting is a lot of clickity-click-clicking. If you're willing to do a little pre-work, I've got a way to save you a little time as you're reviewing student postings.
Background: Every course has an internal Moodle id number. Every student also has an internal Moodle id number. You can use this information to adjust the URL to jump straight to the forum postings view, bypassing the clicking. Trouble is, you need to know those id numbers.
Go to a view that lists all your students (e.g. Gradebook, Participants list, or Enrolled users). Move your cursor to hover over a student name (don't click, just hover).
In the very bottom left-hand corner of the browser, a URL will be displayed. It will look something like this:
https://your.moodle.site/user/view.php?id=1857&course=17
id=1857 the student's Moodle id
course=17 the course Moodle id
Work your way down the list of students, making a note of each student's Moodle id number.
The URL for the posts view is:
https://your.moodle.site/mod/forum/user.php?id=1857&course=17
Paste this URL into your web browser (replacing your.moodle.site with your actual site URL), but don't hit <Return/Enter> just yet.
Notice the id=1857 and course=17. If you modify those to match your course's Moodle id number and the student you want to view and hit <Return/Enter>, you'll be taken directly to the list of that student's forum postings. No more clickity-click through the twisty menu. Make sure you don't delete the ? or &, and don't add any spaces.
Sally Student's forum postings: https://your.moodle.site/mod/forum/user.php?id=1857&course=17
Sam Student's forum postings (all I did was change the id= to 5): https://your.moodle.site/mod/forum/user.php?id=5&course=17
To view the next student's postings, adjust the id= number again.
The URL for the discussions view looks like this: (just add &mode=discussions) to the end of the above URL
https://your.moodle.site/mod/forum/user.php?id=1857&course=17&mode=discussions
If you use this technique, you can consider yourslf a moderately advanced Moodle user. Congratulations!
Moodle v2.4