We have a lot of instructors and TAs managing our courses and they all respond to various forum posts to help with student discussion. Students don't always recognize when a response is from a staff member and we think it would be beneficial to show when there's been a "staff reply" to a particular post. (Just the word "staff" or "instructor" next to their name in the post would be sufficient at this point.)
Given that these instructors and TAs have roles in the database, I would think it would be fairly straightforward to add this. However, I spent a little time looking at mod/forum/lib.php and mod/forum/discuss.php files and I can't seem to figure it out. Anyone have any ideas?
I also thought about accomplishing this creating a 'visible' group and adding the instructors to that group (giving them a nice "instructor" picture as a way to identify them and set them apart). But my understanding with groups is that if I set up an instructor group and enable groups in the forums then students who are not a part of that group won't be able to respond to the 'instructor group' posts. Do I have that right?
Thanks in advance for the help.