If you need help understanding course content or have a question about something you read or learned in a course, you can get help in the course forums. Course forums let you search to see whether your question has been asked before or post your own question. You can also read and reply to other people's questions and discussions.

Forum posts can be read and responded to by other learners in the course and mentors if mentors are active in that course. Course staff or instructors do not always read or post in the forums.

Find and read posts in the forums

To find the forums:

  • Open the course you want to visit the forums for.
  • Click Forums or Discussions on the left side of the page.

In some courses, you can also get to the forums by clicking on discussion prompts in the course outline. Discussion prompts and responses show up as threads in the course forums.

When using the forums, please be sure to follow our Code of Conduct.

After reading a forum post, you can:

  • Upvote it by clicking Upvote at the bottom of the post.
  • Reply by clicking Reply at the bottom of the post.
  • Get email notifications when people reply to that post.
  • Report the post.
  • Get a direct link to that post by opening the menu and choosing Link to Post.

Search in the forums

To search for a post in the forums, type what you want to search for into the search box at the top of the forum page. The results will show you forum posts that include the word or words you searched for.

Filter forum threads

To filter threads, click one of the filter labels at the top of the forum page:

  • Latest: forum posts that have been made recently
  • Top: forum posts with the most upvotes
  • Unanswered: forum posts that haven’t been replied to yet

Post in the forums

To make your own post in a forum:

  1. Open the course you want to make a forum post in.
  2. Click the Discussions tab on the left.
  3. Click New Thread at the top right.
  4. Write your post, then choose a category for it.
  5. Click Post.

To post to the forums in an old platform course:

  1. Open the course you want to make a forum post in.
  2. Click the Forums tab on the left.
  3. Click the title of the sub-forum you want to post in. 
  4. Click Start a new thread.
  5. Write your post, then click Create new thread.

To reply to someone else's post in a forum:

  1. Open the forum post you want to reply to.
  2. Click Reply at the bottom of the post.

When you post in the forums, your name will show up on the post. Anyone taking that course, even in a different session, will be able to see your post.

Post an image in the forums

To share an image in the forums, click the picture icon.

Edit or delete a forum post

After you make a post in a discussion forum, you can edit or delete it.

To edit or delete one of your posts:

  1. Open the post you want to edit or delete.
  2. Click the menu icon in the upper right corner of the post.
  3. Click Edit or Delete.
  4. After you edit a post, you can edit that post again, but you can't undo your edits and go back to a previous version of that post.