One of the biggest challenges in using forums for an online class is keeping discussions focused on the topic. This becomes even more difficult when you allow students to create new topics in a forum. Moodle offers two tools that you can use to help keep discussions on track—custom scales and splitting discussions.
Moodle enables you to use a scale to rate student's work. A scale offers you something other than a grade to give the student as feedback. Scales can be used to rate forum postings, assignment submissions, and glossary entries. The following screenshot shows a feedback on the relevance of a posting, given in a custom scale by a teacher:
To create and apply a custom scale, follow these steps:
Users with the roles Administrator, Course creator, and Teacher can create custom scales.
From the Administration block, click on Scales. This displays the Scales page.
On the Scales page, click on the Add a new scale button...