Collecting learner feedback: forum and comments

Learners can comment on your content, reply to each other and ask questions that you answer from the back office. These exchanges are called the forum, but it is not a separate discussion space: every comment is attached to a specific piece of content, and learners have no “forum” screen in their menu. This article explains where to find these comments.

⚠️ Prerequisites: comments must be allowed for the account. This option is available in the back-office settings. The forum must also be enabled directly in the settings of the capsule concerned.

⚠️ Permissions required: you need a forum animation right. Without it, the Forum tab does not appear. See Assigning rights.

Where learners write their comments

Learners have several entry points to the forum:

• On a capsule’s page: before launching the capsule, they see a counter showing the number of comments and a See all comments link.
• Inside a capsule: activity by activity, the Comment area button opens a panel that tells them their comments are public and linked to the content displayed on screen. This button stays hidden until a quiz has been answered, and it never appears on an evaluation quiz.

Learners can also leave comments:

• At the end of a capsule: in the Comment field, to leave a comment for the learners who come next.
• Under a feed post: in the Comment this post… field.
• Under a question tip: in the Write an answer… field. Learners can vote for answers, and the author of the question can mark the most helpful one.

Tracks, and product sheets viewed on their own, cannot receive comments.

How discussions are organised

In the comment area, a learner can:

• Reply to a comment and Like it.
• Translate a comment written in a language other than the default one.
• Open the comment options, shown as …, to Copy or Remove a comment. Removing only applies to their own comments.
• Report a comment: this action is added to the options when comment reporting is enabled on the account.

Learners can also quote a capsule or a tip, mention another learner and dictate their text.

Read and moderate comments from the Animation menu

In Animation > Forum, a table lists the capsules with the columns New messages, Nb. discussions and Capsule title, sorted by unread comments.

Above the table, four filters narrow the view:

• Filter by department
• Filter by group
• Filter by category
• Filter by track

You can also filter with My capsules and Hide capsules without discussions, and use Refresh capsule discussions to update the list. This table has no search field.

Click a row to open the Discussions window. In the left-hand column, the General comments section groups the comments posted on the capsule’s home page.

The activities that have received comments are then listed in the order they appear in the capsule.

For each activity, you see:

• its position in the capsule, that is, its notion and its rank within that notion;
• its title;
• the number of comments and replies;
• the New label when a comment has not been read yet

Only activities that contain at least one comment appear in this column.

🔧 Administrator side. You can only reply from an activity view, and the input field stays inactive until you have selected the comment you are replying to. Deleting is your only moderation action: you cannot like or report a comment from the back office.

Read comments from the capsule editor

Comments are also available from the capsule itself, which puts them back in the context of the activity commented on. Open the capsule in the back office, then display the comments from the preview panel on the right of the screen. This view only shows the open capsule: for an overview of all commented capsules, use the Forum tab.

Enable or disable the forum

The forum is set at three levels:

• In the account configuration settings, under Social Learning > User generated content
• For one capsule, open its editor, then the Settings tab, Animation section, and use the Disable the forum button

To enable or disable the forum on several capsules, use multiple edit, then fill in the Enable forum field by selecting Yes or No.

Disabling the forum deletes no comments: they stay saved and become visible again when the forum is re-enabled. While the forum is disabled, the capsule no longer appears in the Forum tab.

Who can read and moderate the forum

Administrators with Animation rights enabled can access the forum. You can restrict this access by selecting:

• Can view forum for all capsules
• Can view forum for his/her own capsules
• No forum access

Only the first two options let you select:

• Can edit forum for all capsules, or
• Can edit forum for his/her own capsules

Only this option allows deleting comments written by others.

Viewing or editing “his/her own capsules” means the capsules you created or those of your department. Do not confuse it with My capsules in the Forum tab, which only shows the capsules you are credited as an author on.

Notifications and statistics

Administrator side

For every new comment, an email is sent to the capsule’s authors and to its creator. Replies do not trigger an email, and you do not receive a notification for your own comments. The link in the email opens the Forum tab of the capsule concerned.

Learner side

A learner receives a notification when a new comment is posted on content they have already reacted to, or when someone replies to their own comment. Posting a comment automatically subscribes the learner to the discussion. They can then turn off this follow-up from the corresponding row in their notifications.

If you only watch your inbox, you will miss every reply: the Forum tab is the only complete view of the exchanges.

Statistics side

In the learners statistics report, the Comments column shows the total number of comments a learner has posted, forum and feed combined.

There is no statistics tab dedicated to the forum.

Comment scope: the account, not the department

Comments are attached to the main account, not to a department. When a capsule is shared with several departments, every learner who has access to it reads and contributes to the same discussion.

The Filter by department filter only displays the capsules of a given department: it does not create separate discussions.

Actions that are not available

Edit a comment

A posted comment cannot be edited, either by the learner or by you. To correct a comment, you must delete it and post it again.

Comment anonymously

A comment cannot be written anonymously: it always shows its author’s name and photo, and the author’s profile is clickable.

Hide a comment

A comment cannot be hidden without being deleted. You cannot block or mute a learner either.

No image or file can be attached to a comment.

Report a comment

Reports are not handled in the back office. When a learner reports a comment, it is hidden for that learner only: no alert is sent and no list of reports is made available for moderation. Likewise, when a comment is deleted, its author receives no notification: the comment simply disappears.

Going further

• Assigning rights
• Capsule ratings
• The feed
• Sharing content across departments