The Forums tab allows for easy communication with your instructor and other students. To access the Forums, select Forums in the Connect tab on the Navigation Menu.

After selecting Forums you should be able to see your Discussion Question, Private, and Questions to the Instructor Forum.

Discussion questions (DQs) help to facilitate conversations in the classroom and contribute toward your grade. There are a few different ways you can access your Discussion Questions: directly from the Dashboard’s Weekly Calendar or from the Navigation Menu’s Path, Planner, or Forums under Connect.

If you access a forum topic via the Weekly Calendar, Path, or Planner, then you will see the option to Add a Post. If you access a forum topic via the Forums in the Navigation Menu, you will see the option to Reply to the post.

Add a DQ Post through the Path

If you select a Discussion Question from the Dashboard’s Weekly Calendar or Planner, you will be directed to where the DQ is in the Path. You can also go to the Path directly from the Navigation Menu.

Once in the Path tab, click on your Topic for the current week. After clicking on your Topic, select Tasks.

In Tasks, click on the Discussion Question to which you would like to respond. After you have selected a discussion question, you will be able to see the content of the question. To reply to the discussion question, click Add A Post.

Once you have typed your response, you may either click Post Reply, Save as a Draft, or Cancel. When you save your post as a draft, it is only visible to you. It will be available for you to edit for the next 24 hours.

After clicking Post Reply, you will see your official response with a time stamp.

NOTE Posts saved as draft are added to the bottom of the forum page. To continue editing your draft DQ post, locate the DQ post title with the word “[Draft]” next to it.

Begin by selecting Forum under Connect from the Navigation Menu.

From the LMS Forums, you can reply to topics in the Discussion Question forum, the Private Forum, and the Questions to Instructor Forum.

After locating the topic, you want to reply to, read the Description of the topic, and then select Reply under the topic Description.

Once you have typed your response, you may either click Post Reply, Save as a Draft, or Cancel. When you save your post as a draft, it is only visible to you. It will be available for you to edit for the next 24 hours.

After clicking Post Reply, you will see your official response with a time stamp.

Reply to a Classmate's Post

When answering discussion questions, you will often be required to respond to classmates’ posts for participation. Begin by accessing the classmate’s post that you would like to respond to.

After you click on a DQ response, you will be able to see the content of the response. To submit a response, click Reply.

Once you have typed your response, you may either click Post Reply, Save as a Draft, or Cancel. When you save your post as a draft, it is only visible to you. It will be available for you to edit for the next 24 hours.

Once submitted, your post will appear underneath your classmate’s post with the time stamp!

Post Icons

You can determine if a post was made by your instructor, if it has been graded, or if it was marked as substantive by the following icons:

Post was made by instructor

Post has been graded

Post has been marked as substantive

Tracking Participation

To track how many responses or posts you have made for your discussion questions, begin by selecting Connect from the Navigation Menu.

Then, click on Forums.

By default, you will be taken to the Discussion Question forum. Here it will provide you with a list of all your discussion questions sorted by the earliest to the latest topics for the course. In the My Posts column, it will provide you with the number of posts and responses made for each discussion question.

While there may be a Delete button visible on your DQ posts and responses, you cannot actually delete them. If you press the Delete button, you will receive an error that states, "You do not have permission to complete this activity". 

You can still edit the post however, as long as none of the following statements are true: 

• Your post has been graded by the instructor,
• Your post has been marked as substantive, or
• A student or instructor has replied to your post.
• The post was made over 24 hours prior.

The Private Forum allows for private communication between yourself and the instructor or a classmate. You may ask questions in the Private Forum that you wish for only the instructor to see. When a topic is created in The Private Forum, you and your instructor will receive a notification. 

To initiate a discussion with an instructor or classmate, click New Topic in the upper right-hand corner.

After selecting the student or staff you would like to contact, you must enter a Title and Description; if desired, you may attach a file to your message. To send the message, click Submit.

You can sort the private forum by who sent the last message.

The Questions to Instructor Forum allows for class-wide communication. Topics in this forum are visible to all instructors and students in the class.

To initiate a discussion, click New Topic in the upper right-hand corner.

You must enter a Title and Description; if desired, you may attach a file to your message. To send the message, click Submit.

To change how your text looks, such as the font, size and style, you can use the top panel of your discussion question.

You can hyperlink and remove hyperlinks using the chain and broken chain icons.

Copying and pasting an image into your Discussion Question may cause an error. Instead, you can insert an image by following the steps below. 

1. Click the Insert/edit image button.

   

2. Click the browse button.

   

3. Select the image you wish to upload and click Open.

4. In the General tab, you can add an Image Description and change the Dimensions of the image. This step is optional. 

   

5. In the Advanced tab, you can change the style of your image by entering numbers in the Vertical space box, the Horizontal space box, or the Border box. You don't have to put anything in the Style box because it will automatically update as you change the values in the other three boxes. This step is optional. 

   

6. Once, you're ready to upload your image to the Discussion Question, click Ok. 

While you cannot copy and past equations into your discussion question from Word, you can use your DQ’s built in equation editor to add your equation.

The preview button gives you the ability to see how your post will look before you submit it.

To spellcheck your response, click on the ABC button.

Sometimes, when you go to submit to the forum, you will get the error null:

This error can happen when your browser isn't working properly, you have a browser extension that is interfering with the post, or other browser related issues. To avoid this error, you can try to submit your post via a private or incognito window using the instructions on our General Browser Troubleshooting article or disable the extension blocking you from posting with our article Managing Your Browser Add-ons and Extensions.

A Processing Request message that loads indefinitely may occur if you add emojis to forum posts or if the post is too long (around 60000 characters but the exact limit depends on system). To solve this, simply remove the emoji, make sure your post is not too long, and try posting again. If you do not want to shorten your post, you can try attaching a Word document with your post contents to your reply.

Please note, you can only use the special characters or emojis provided through LMS; emojis added from your mobile device or computer do not allow you to post.

Also, it is worth checking if your post contains a URL / hyperlink. If entered incorrectly, a URL / hyperlink may cause the Processing Request message to appear. To address it, try re-entering the link using the hyperlink tool in LMS or converting the link to a plain text format.

Once your course ends, you will no longer have access to make posts within the Discussion Questions forum. You can still create new topics in the Questions to Instructor forum and Private forum. 

To access the CLC Group Forums, see Viewing Your CLC Group Forum.

If you are unable able to see the posts made by other students within the discussion questions, make sure to post your initial response to the discussion question. Some discussion questions will prevent you from replying to another student's posts before your reply to the main question.

If you continue to experience issues with seeing other students' posts, please reach out to the instructor about this issue.

The Guardian-Instructor Forum allows anybody set to the guardian role in LoudCloud to communicate with the instructor. If you are not a guardian and are seeing this forum, your account may have been set up incorrectly. Please contact technical support for assistance.