Forum courses in CarmenCanvas are course shells that can be used for a variety of university purposes, such as building instructional materials for academic courses. They are not connected to the Registrar’s system and can be created for each course a teacher currently teaches or plans to teach in the future; then copied into the academic course each semester. All forum courses are grouped into a special term (e.g., Other term) to make them easier to find using our filtering system.
Who can use these courses?
The ability to create a forum course is available to instructors. In order to see the Request Forum Course option on the Carmen landing page, you must have a course in the My Courses List in which you are an instructor.
Instructors in a forum course can then add other users/other instructors using the ‘Manage Participants’ link listed under the course title on the Carmen landing page.
Why should you use them?
- These non-academic course shells give you time to build your course the way you want, when you want, and update it as needed. Once you have your forum course built, you can copy it each semester into your academic course shell.
- You can make changes for a specific class or section (e.g., timeline changes, an additional discussion topic, etc.) only in the academic course for which they apply. If you decide any modifications will be useful for subsequent classes or sections, you can add them to your forum course. The forum course remains the clean, up-to-date version of your course.
- Everyone who is involved in developing a course or updating course content from semester to semester can work in the same forum course, without having to be added to each academic course or worry about whether FERPA data is being protected.
Caution
Once you have developed your content in the forum course, you need to manually copy your course material into your academic course. Updates to material in a forum course do not automatically transfer to academic courses.
Create a Forum Course
Only instructors will see the Request Forum Course option. If you do not see this, use the CarmenCanvas Contact Form to request a Forum Course.
- Log in to carmen.osu.edu
- Scroll to the bottom of the landing page; click Request Forum Course.
- This will take you to a new page.
- Type the name of your course – it must be more than 5 characters long.
- Click Request. Once processed, your Forum Course will display in the My Courses list.
User Experience Tips
– We recommend titling the Forum Course with the same name as the academic course. All Forum Courses will be listed in the term “Other” and will be easily identifiable as such.
– Depending on the number of courses you have loaded in your My Courses List, you may need to search for the Forum Course using the Filter options.
