Settings, permissions, and restrictions in any part of the Discussion Forum work on a cascading basis. A selected option in a category affects every topic in that category. You can override category settings in an individual topic. When you create a topic, you have a number of options to choose from.
Topic Title — The subject of the topic.
Category — Select the category under which the topic will be listed.
Note: Whatever option you select for the items below overrides the option(s) set at the category level. For more information, see Understanding How Category and Topic Options Interact in the Discussion Forum.
Status — This option controls who can read or post in this topic. Options include:
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Everyone can read and post. This option gives students the ability to read and post messages in this topic.
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Only faculty, TA, and staff can read and post. Everyone else can read but not post. Students will be able to read existing posts but will not be able to post any messages of their own. This option may be useful to end a discussion that pertained to an assignment that has ended.
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Only faculty, TA, and staff can read and post. No one else can read. Students will be able to see the topic header but will not be able to access the posts. Instead, they will see a message that the topic is locked.
Make this topic read-only on — Set a date and time in which the topic becomes read-only, meaning that students can no longer post in the topic after that time. This is useful for Discussion Forum assignments.
Note: The time selected via the date/time picker must be in one-hour increments. The only exception to this is 11:59 PM, which allows you to set something for the end of the day. Any other time will not be properly saved in the system if entered.
Students cannot see any posts until they post in this topic — If enabled, students must post in the topic before they can see any post in the topic. This is useful in Discussion Forum assignments to prevent students from seeing other student work before creating their own post for the assignment.
Students have 15 minutes to edit or delete messages they post in this topic — Selecting this option restricts students to editing or deleting their posts for only 15 minutes after they originally make a post. By default, the Discussion Forum allows students to edit and delete posts without any time restrictions. If you would like to limit the amount of time students have to edit and delete posts, select this option.
This topic is sticky (displays at top of category) — Selecting this option will make the topic always appear at the top of the list of topics in a category. This could be useful for an instruction topic in a Discussion Forum exercise category.
This topic can be marked as having a correct answer by you, course faculty or TAs — Selecting this option enables the topic creator or the course faculty or TAs to mark an individual post in the topic as being the correct answer to the question posed in the original post in the topic.
Tip: Selected options will be represented by an icon or words for each category on the Admin and Discussion Forum home pages. For example, if you select to limit topic creation to just faculty and TAs, you will see the icon in the title header for that specific category.