What makes a forum post count as read?

In the Discussions tool's Statistics & Grading screens, a post is counted as read if you do any of the following:

  1. Mark the post as read.
  2. Access a conversation in a topic that was configured to automatically mark all messages as read.
  3. Author the post.
  4. Reply to the post.

Mark a post as read.

Go to Discussions.

Select Discussions from the tool menu in your site.

Select a topic.

Select the title of a topic with at least one unread message.

Open a conversation or mark it as read.

  1. To view the message(s) before marking it as read, select the title of the conversation.
  2. To mark the unread messages in a conversation as read, select the Mark as Read button to the right of the conversation.

Mark message(s) as read.

  1. To mark all the messages in the conversation as read, select the Mark All as Read button near the top of the page.
  2. To mark a specific message as read, select the Mark as Read button under the title of the message.

Or select an individual post.

Alternatively, you can select the title of a post to access that post by itself.  Doing so will also mark the post as read.

Access a conversation in a topic where messages are automatically marked as read.

When instructors or site administrators create forum topics, they have an option to Automatically mark all messages as read.  Selecting the title of any conversation in a topic with this setting enabled will mark all messages in the conversation as read.

For more information about this option, see Create a topic - Automatically mark messages as read.

Author a post.

When you author a forum post, it also counts as a post you read.

For information about posting in Discussions, see How do I post to a forum?

Reply to a post.

Posts to which you reply are counted as read.

For information about replying to posts, see How do I reply to a forum post (in a conversation)?