Standard forum view

Standard forum view

by Eric Hagley -
Number of replies: 2

I've had a look but couldn't seem to find anything. My question is:

Is there a way to have the forum display with the discussion part taking up 80% of the screen space?

My students inevitably click the person's name who started the forum post - it's in the middle of the screen, and it kind of makes sense to click that. No matter how often I tell students, it is the one thing that continually sends students on the wrong path. They click the person's name, then try and send messages rather than post replies.

This, to me, is a major design fault and I wonder is there any way I can change it.

Discussion (couldn't this be called something else? "Discussion topic", "My posting" or something clearer) is what should be clicked to get to the content. Giving that maximum screen space is essential I think. Replies is the next most important section and should come next to discussion, then who created the most recent reply, who started the post and which group they are in. 75%, 5%, 10%,10% is my ideal screen space layout. What do others think?

I know forum has been around for a long time. I've only had a few students in the past (have used Moodle since 1.2) that have had troubles and those have been in small classes, so not a biggie. But I have a course with over a thousand students from 4 different countries now and we are having the same problem in all 4 countries so it doesn't seem to be limited to one culture (as I initially thought it might be.) I'd be very interested in others thoughts on this and if there is a way to change the layout.

Many thanks

Eric

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Eric Hagley

Re: Standard forum view

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Eric,

One of the possibilities to prevent them from trying to message instead of post, which I used before I retired, was to just turn off messaging. big grin I, and my Principal agreed, did not want to be responsible for for students sending inappropriate messages to each other. My replacement for messaging was the Dialogue activity set so they could only write to me.

You other point of changing the word, Discussion is easily doable, if you are admin or can have an admin do it for you. It can be done via Language customisation.

Go to Administration > Site administration > Language > Language customisation and choose your language. Then click Open language pack for editing. Click Continue after the pack loads. In the, Show strings of these components, scroll down to the mod section, then click on forum.php. In the, Only strings containing box type, Discussion, then click on Show strings. Scroll down the list of results until you find the one for mod_forum   discussion   Discussion, with an empty text box next to it. In the box, type, "Discussion topic", "My posting" or something clearer. Finally, scroll to the bottom of the page and click, Save changes to the language pack. When asked if you wish to save these changes to your local language pack, click Continue.

You should see your new wording the next time you visit a forum.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Standard forum view

by Eric Hagley -

Sorry for the late reply here and appreciation to you Al for these ideas. Thom Rawson has been working with me and he's been able to use CSS to get rid of the link to the profile of the person that starts a forum. However I think it is still a cosmetic solution (though a very much appreciated one!). I wonder if others think the same way as I do regarding the design of the forum? Should I start a tracker item? Do others think it is a fundamental design flaw? My ideal forum interface would look something like this


Your post (or something else, but not "Discussion")

Follow button

Group

Replies

Last post made by

An example title (click anywhere in this section and it will take you to that forum discussion)

started by Joe Bloggs on (date) (institution name here?) (NO link to student profile)

Click here to follow this topic only

3

6

Marla Doe – see it here (clickable)

Another cool title

Started by Minnie Do on (date) (institution name here?) (no link to student profile)

Following (eg only)

2

2

 Joe Bloggs– see it here (clickable)

 

 

 

 

 


Forum has been in Moodle from the beginning and it is a crucial part thereof but I really feel it of all things is in a dire need of a facelift. Would be interested in others' ideas.

Many thanks to everyone that puts so much time into this - wish I had the tools to do this myself!

Average of ratings: -