When a student enters a forum, they will see Forum description at the top of the forum's page. This text should tell the student what the forum is about. You can also use this introduction to tell the student if they can rate posts by other students. It also tells the student how to link to a document with more extensive instructions on how to use the forum. This is possible because the description is a full-featured web page that can hold anything you put on a web page.

As with other activities, if you check the Show description box, the description will display on the course page.