Create a course forum/blog

[shabana]

Hello fellow academics, and peace to you in your pre-semester prep! I'm scrambling to create a course website (we use Desire2Learn and I hate it). I need it to have threaded posts. I tried creating a forum at freeforums but it's too spare and raw, too "Chronicle". I'm wondering if there is an option that is more 'bloggy' yet allows for threads (so that we can organize our weekly discussion). Maybe I'm missing something really obvious. Apparently wordpress has themes that allow for threaded posts but not all of them do.

Comments

[annotated_em]

I've actually had pretty good luck using Dreamwidth as my platform. I ask Support pretty-please for a group invite code and set up a course comm and go from there.

[shabana]

Thank you, Annotated. I guess I need to look into what a course comm is ...

[annotated_em]

It would just be a community (like this one!) but that you could set up to be restricted posting--that is, only members can post, for example. Or all posts are moderated (you-the-moderator has to approve them before they show up). If you work out an invite code with DW proper, then they can set it up so that a student creating a journal using that invite code is prompted to join the class comm.

[shabana]

thank you. There's still much in the basics of the setup that is a bit hazy for me, but I'll work on it.

[shabana]

I honestly don't really/yet see how dreamwidth is different from e.g. a wordpress blog.