Using Oncourse Forums, how do I control access?

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General information

Note: To complete these procedures, you must be assigned a role having the necessary permissions. To determine your role, follow the directions in Participant roles. To view a list of permissions associated with a given role, see Permissions, roles, and tools. For a basic understanding of roles and permissions, see Permissions and roles: Overview.

When you create a new forum or topic, the default permission settings assign each role in the site (e.g., student) to a predefined permission level (e.g., Contributor). You can change the permissions from the default settings either while you're creating a new forum or topic (see Creating a new forum and topic in Forums), or when you're editing an existing forum or topic (see Revising or deleting a forum or topic).

Under "Permissions", you can modify permission levels for participant roles (and groups, if you've created them; see Managing groups). To do so, from the drop-down list next to "This site role:", select a role (or group) for editing by clicking its name. Then, next to "gets this permission level:", use the drop-down list to select from several predefined permission levels. Additionally, you can create custom permission levels by clicking to enable or disable the following functions:

New Forum: Create a new forum. You can modify this option only via Template Settings.
New Topic: Create a new topic. You can modify this option only via Template Settings or Forum Settings.
New Response: Create a new response to your topic.
Response to Response: Send responses to a topic response.
Post to Gradebook: Grade responses and add comments. Send grades and comments to Gradebook.
Change Settings: Change the topic settings.
Read: Read topic responses.
Mark as Read: Mark messages as read.
Moderate Postings: Moderate messages posted to forum (available if "Moderate Topics in Forum" option was selected above).
Edit Postings: Use the radio buttons to indicate which postings participants with the permission level can revise (none, their own, or all postings).
Delete Postings: Use the radio buttons to indicate which postings participants with the permission level can delete (none, their own, or all postings).

Note: Forum permission settings will apply to all subsequently created topics in that forum, but if you modify forum permission settings after topics have been created, you must change the topic permission settings separately.

Limiting access to a specific student group

If the student role has permission to view a given forum or topic, then all students will be able to see it, regardless of group settings. To limit a forum or topic so that only one group can see it:

In Forums, click New Forum or New Topic, or click Forum Settings or Topic Settings to modify an existing forum or topic.
On the Forum Settings or Topic Settings page, under "Permissions", in the drop-down list next to "This site role:", select student. From the drop-down list next to "gets this permission level:", choose None.
In the drop-down list next to "This site role:", select the group to which you want to give access. From the drop-down list next to "gets this permission level:", choose a permission level (e.g., Contributor), or check the boxes below the drop-down list to enable or disable specific functions.
At the bottom of the page, click Save.