Moodle Forums provide a blog-like space where students can hold threaded asynchronous (or even synchronous) discussions, either as the entire class, or based on groups of your choosing.
Pros: Integration with Moodle.
Cons: If you plan to have different sets of student groups for different activities, and to use the gradebook, you’ll need to also set up groupings of groups. UMass Amherst has instructions for creating Groupings. Also: navigating back to individual posts (and replies) can be tricky if you expect to use these during some live discussion. Finally: your feedback to individual students via the Forum will be visible to all students.
Expert: Sharon Strauss