As part of the growing suite of social media offerings, the APS has established online Member Group discussion forums for each of the nine APS Colleges, 41 Interest Groups and eight States/Territories (encompassing APS Branches).

The online discussion forums provide an opportunity for all APS members to participate in topical discussions and share information and ideas through posting and reading comments. It could also be an avenue for members to engage in peer consultation.

Active forums

Once a Member Group has appointed a Moderator to monitor its discussion forum, the Chair of the Member Group needs to contact the National Office to activate the forum. To make the work of a Moderator easier, they can subscribe to receive automatic updates when new posts are made each day by members on their specific forums.

Active forums will appear on a Member Group homepage and all APS members can access each forum via their APS login. A Moderator can set up a number of forums to meet the needs of the range of members in a particular group. Titles of these forums could be 'Student forum', 'College Supervised Practice forum', 'Private Practice forum', 'Conference forum', 'CPD forum', 'Mornington Peninsula Branch forum'. Each forum can then create as many topics as needed.

Check your Member Group's webpage to see if your Member Group has an active Online Discussion Forum. If your Member Group does not have an active forum, contact the Chair of your Member Group.

Forum features

• All current members of the APS can access the Forums using their member login.
• On first access of the Forums, members will be prompted to read and accept the Forum Rules.
• Members can read posts, add new topics and add new posts.
• A member can choose to subscribe to receive email notification of posts to a particular topic. A member can choose to un-subscribe to email notifications if previously subscribed.
• Users can search for keywords in an individual Forum or all Forums. Users can also search for the names of other users who have posted in the forum systems.
• Each forum has a Moderator appointed by the Member Group's Committee to oversee the group's Discussion Board. Moderators can create and delete forums within their group's Discussion Board.

Further information

For further information regarding the Member Group discussion forums, please refer to the Communication section of the Member Groups Committee Manual.