The DS4OERS forums provide the opportunity for learners to interact with their peers while discussing key concepts and issues relating to the course. You are invited to create an account and fill out your profile on forums.oeru.org (see activity below for more information).

The OER Foundation has donated use of the OERu’s forums application software for the purpose of this course.

Overview

This course uses Discourse – a modern open source software application for forums. We use forums for more substantive discussions where short comments via micro-blog or social media posts are not sufficient for in depth discussion. We also use the poll feature of the Discourse software for learners to share their opinions on short topical questions. You will find prompts and links to the relevant discussion topics embedded in the course materials. The forum site should also be used to post any support questions and each micro-course has a dedicated general forum for this purpose. As an open learning community, if you know the answers to any questions, please share the gift of knowledge by helping your peers.

We will automatically “fetch” an extract from posts on forums.oeru.org for inclusion in the course feed with a link back to the original post or reply.

Activity: Create your forums account and complete your profile

Create your account
You will need to create an account on the forums.oeru.org site in order to join the discussions. Creating an account is easy.

1. Go to https://forums.oeru.org
2. Click on the “Sign up” button at the top of your screen
   
3. Fill out your Email address, Username, Name (we recommend that you use your real name) and Password. Click on the “Create New Account” button.

Upload your avatar image and complete your profile page

1. Log in to forums.oeru.org
2. Click on the avatar image at the top of your screen, then click on the “Person” icon to reveal the submenu. Click on the “Gear” icon to access your preferences.
   
3. Under the “Account” option, upload a profile picture.
4. Under the “Emails” option, review your email settings to set you preferences for email notifications from the site.

Submit a spot poll response

1. Log into forums.oeru.org
2. Cast your vote for this Spot poll. (Note, usernames of respondents are not displayed.)
3. Check the results of the poll by clicking on the “Show results” button.

Have any questions?

1. Now that you have an account, you can post course specific questions using the DS4OERS General forum. Just click the reply link.

Need help?

The OERu support site provides instructions and supporting videos for the following:

• An overview of the structure of the forum site.
• How to locate the forums for your specific course.