Somehow students are unable to "start a new discussion" in the forums. How can I fix that? Moodle 2.4 standard forum
You are one the right track with the question I suspect, permissions. Go into Site Administration, and look at Permissions on Accounts. Check the Student account and it is likely that permission to start a new discussion has been set at "Inherit" and somewhere, someone has switched it off. If you change it to "Allow", at the Site level, it will affect ALL forums in the site, which should work. If you only want it on that one forum, then go into the Forum, then select "Permissions" from the menu and make sure that Student are listed everywhere they need to be.
These are the four main permissions for Students to do what they need to do:
Delete own posts (within deadline)
Reply to posts
Start new discussions
View discussions
Change the Rate permissions if you want students be able to rate posts.
Make sure Students can access the forum via those permissions and it should be Ok. If Students are not listed, then they can be added with the plus sign or button at the end of the row. (Not individual Students, but as enrollees.)
If students are already listed, but cannot access what they need, then there is another problem, probably in the site wide permissions.
If this does not work then there is another issue altogether, which will probably need some hack of the code to make it work.
Colin,
Thank you, howeber I cannot find "Permissions On Accounts", I am very new to Moodle, when I go to:
Site Administration and then Users I see two links: Accounts, and Permissions
Site Administration and then Users I see two links: Accounts, and Permissions
neither seems to have the area you are talking about. Could you please walk me through this in 2.4, my Skype ID is johnedmiston if you have time.
John
One link is
Home > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles and go to Student Role, look at the previous post for what to look for.
In the Forum you want students to be able to initiate questions and reply and so on, go to Settings menu > Permissions > Activity: Forum. You will find the same things there as well, but changes will only apply to that Forum, not all Forums.
Now be careful here. Are you an Administrator or a Manager or Teacher?
Administrators have overall rights, Managers have restricted rights, Teachers only have rights in their courses and nowhere else. If you are a Manager, then you need to talk to your Moodle Administrator and get Admin rights. If they do not want to give them to you, and if you are new I can understand why, then let that person know that what was in the previous reply is what they have to look for.
John: are you using separate groups in your forum?
Hi, I hope you can help. I am an administrator (fairly new) in Moodle 2.5 and am trying to set up a Forum for the whole class to use in lessons. I have set up the Forum/discussion topic but students are unable to reply to the discussion (no button appears on the page). I am confused as another member of staff has been able to set one up which their students can access. Can you advise me on how to check their permissions. If this is a permission problem do I have to alter the permission for each individual student or can I do it for a group. I did ask a no of students to try and no-one was successful so it appears to be a cohort issue.
Thanks
Jane
Hello there. Have a look at number 1 in Forum FAQ
1. First- are you sure you are using a regular forum and you haven't by mistake used the default news forum at the top of your course which only allows teachers to post and students can't reply?
2. Second - go into Course administration>edit settings and see if your course is set to separate groups (forced) and go into the forum settings too and see if it is set to separate groups. If your forum is set to separate groups the students can only reply if you post to each group. If you just want the whole class to be able to reply then make sure the groups setting is set to - well - none
(PS -now I know where Neston is!)