For some people this might be a “duh” tip but I know there are some people who are wondering why the News Forum keeps coming back after deleting it or wondering how to get it back because I didn’t know when I was first starting out!

The News Forum is a special type of forum that is in your course by default. Think of this forum as a one-way street of information. The teacher(s) can give out information but student can not reply (unless you tweak other things). Another useful function of this forum is that by default it forces everyone to be subscribed which sends out an email to students when there are postings. This can of course be turned off.

So, you don’t want that forum? Okay…

  1. Go into your course Settings
  2. In the drop-down menu “News items to show” choose 0
    News Forum Items to Show
  3. Scroll down, Save Changes
  4. Delete the News Forum by going to your course, turn editing on, click the X
    News Forum Delete
  5. Delete the Latest News Block (or hide it)

Yahoo, it’s gone and will stay gone!

Uh oh, you want your News Forum and Lateset News Block back?

  1. Go to course Settings and choose the number of News items to show
  2. Scroll down, Save Changes
  3. Go back to your course homepage and Turn Editing On
  4. Add the “Latest News” block

    5. Add Latest News block

Done, you got it back!

I personally like the News Forum because it is a way to give important news to your students. I’ve used this for our district’s main page when there is news about our district’s Moodle site. This works out great because it emails the teachers that have Moodle accounts automatically, so I don’t have to hand pick each staff’s email. However, users use Moodle in such different ways that this may not be something they would ever do.