Tribal Habits topics and articles (but not pathways) can include a forum to encourage discussion amongst explorers about the training content.
This allows course participants to contribute thoughts and ideas, ask questions, and share experiences for truly social learning.
How to enable the forum
To enable the Forum, follow these steps:
Click ‘Manage forum’ under the Settings tab (in Edit mode for the topic/article) to access the Forum admin page.
Tick ‘Enable Forum for explorers’. When enabled, a ‘View Forum’ button appears. Click the button to access the forum directly as a creator. See below to learn how explorers can access the forum.
Note: For already published topics or articles, you must publish an update after enabling the forum to activate it for explorers.
Two tables can be found on the Forum admin page:
Summary – the total number of posts and replies in the forum, the number of new posts and replies from the past 7, 30 and 90 days, and the total number of ‘favourited’ posts and replies.
Moderation – a list of any posts and replies that have been flagged by at least three explorers and are now hidden in the Forum, as a result. Click here to read more about forum moderation.
How can explorers access the forum?
When enabled, explorers can access the forum by clicking the ‘Forum’ tab at the top-right of the Overview page, from within the article, or from any part within the topic.
Explorers can also access any forum in a topic or article from their dashboard by clicking on the Forum button on the overview slideout (note that after enabling the forum, you must publish an update to the topic/article to activate it for explorers).
Each forum as well as each post within a forum has it's own unique URL. This means you can use the URL to direct explorers to your forum or specific posts from the forum within your topic. Find out more here.
How can explorers use the forum?
Explorers can contribute to a topic’s forum as follows:
Publish a post or reply to a post. Posts and replies are written using a rich-text editor and can include images, files, hyperlinks and giphys. After publishing a post or reply, the author can edit or delete their content.
‘Favourite’ a post or reply (by clicking the star icon).
In addition, explorers can flag posts or replies if they find them inappropriate. Content which is flagged by three explorers is automatically hidden from the forum and made available for moderation by the creator or an administrator.
Explorers can also:
Search the forum using keywords.
Sort posts in the forum according to ‘Most recent’, ‘Most popular’ (i.e. most ‘favourited’) and ‘Most replies’.
What happens to flagged posts or replies?
Posts or replies which are flagged by three explorers are automatically hidden from explorers when viewing the forum and labelled as ‘Flagged for moderation’ when viewed by administrators.
These posts and replies can be found on the Forum admin page (in the ‘Moderation’ table) by administrators who can then review each and decide whether to:
Unflag the content (making it visible in the forum again).
Delete the content permanently from the forum (deleted posts or replies cannot be restored).
How can I add a forum to a pathway?
A pathway does not contain training content itself – it is just a ‘wrap’ or grouping of topics and articles. So you cannot add a forum to a pathway.
Instead, you need to add a forum to a topic or article within a pathway. If you wanted a single forum for all the topics and articles in your pathway, then you could:
Create an article called ‘Forum’ and activate the forum in that article. This article should otherwise contain just one section, perhaps with some instructions about the forum.
Place the article as 'Optional knowledge' within the pathway, making it accessible at all times to explorers in that pathway.
Introduce the forum in the first topic/article of the pathway to direct explorers to it.
How can I encourage more use of a forum or direct explorers to a specific post?
Each forum, as well as the posts within, have their own unique URL.
To promote the use of a topic's forum or to direct explorers to a specific post in the forum (for instance, a dedicated post added by you, as the course creator), insert the URL as a hyperlink in your topic.
Examples
Combine the instructions (including the hyperlink) with an image.
When clicked, the hyperlink shown in the screenshot above opens the forum in a new tab.
Use simple text instructions (including the hyperlink).
When clicked, the hyperlink shown in the screenshot above opens a specific post from the forum in a new tab.
Note: The URL for the forum can be obtained from the address bar of your browser when you have the forum open. The URL for a specific post in the forum can be obtained by clicking the post's heading to open it and then using the URL from the address bar of your browser.
In addition to being able to access your topic's forum at any time via the topic's navigation options, the suggestions outlined above enable you to link explorers to your forum at given points during their learning journey.