Forum Guidelines

Updated sections in red 20th October 2023

Updated section in blue 7th November 2023

Table of Contents

Take careful and kind consideration before you post.

Help Video - linked

This is a private school forum for discussions about your studies. There is a vast diversity of students studying in the school, and all need to be respected. Use your discretion. This is not a social media website.

Is the post relevant to the areas of study you are undertaking at this time? Please stick to the curriculum for the year.

No disclosure of personal health issues or personal matters is allowed.

There is an 'about me 'section on your profile where you can share all the relevant information about yourself you wish, such as your favourite plants, how you decided to study this course and so forth. We have simplified this to one field now.

External links and documents - linked

No external links or documents can be shared in posts. Submit them to the resources area for moderation and if accepted they can be shared from there. Once they have been processed you will now receive a message telling you this. (This may take some time, according to staff resources available.) This is to ensure that any shared materials are from reliable sources and contain accurate information. It also makes all the valuable curated links available to all of our students.
 

To share a resource, please copy the page URL and paste it in the forum. See the help video to see how to share a gallery, as sharing a resource is the same process.

Questions about where to find course material should be directed to your mentor rather than posted on the forum.

If you are not sure whether the post is relevant, message and ask your mentor before posting.

The forum must be maintained as a safe, reputable, relevant and impeccable place for discussions. Consideration for the diversity of students in our community must be followed. The discussion forum is not for canvassing to form offsite private groups, soliciting funds, or promoting your products or other merchandise.

Feedback - linked

Your feedback is appreciated, whether it is an idea to improve our service, a constructive analysis or a critique of the way things are, please use the feedback section; the forum is not an appropriate place to post these. Title and describe your feedback, and it will be examined and responded to in due course.

We have several complaints that when students use the forum or the face-to-face immersions to voice their complaints, it causes significant discomfort in many of your cohorts. This leads to some not using the forum or not speaking at the immersions because they do not feel safe to do so. If you are unhappy about something, please use the feedback form or reach out to your mentor, school leader or Alex privately. Many issues are due to misunderstandings and can be cleared up with a conversation.

Reporting

Reporting is a way of advising us, please use it in the following circumstances.

Please report (with a note) any posts or comments you feel are unsuitable for the forum, and they will be examined in light of the guidelines.

Also, please use the report facility (with a note) if you notice errors in the course content as this feedback is essential for us to add updates to content.

Website questions

Please note that questions regarding IT should not be posted on the forum but directed to Alex by message.

Self-moderation

The forums are operated on the principle of self-moderation. Overzealous activity or negative posts may create bad feelings and repulse people from using the forum as intended. If a student repeatedly demonstrates an incapacity to self-moderate, they will be issued a warning and moderated.

General guide

Your course discussion forums are an essential part of class interaction and community learning.

Here you can chat with other students and share recipes, photos, and ideas. Please use this medium for chats related to the course so that the mentors can see the discussions and add comments when they may be helpful. Participating in these is a valuable and essential part of the course and your assessment. Use the discussion forums rather than setting up social media groups since everyone has access to the website but not everyone uses social media and therefore some may be excluded if other forums are used and that is not in the community ethos of our school. Also, the discussion forums are moderated by the tutors and mentors so that misinformation is not generated.

Please use respectful language- this is a class discussion forum, not social media.

If you are not sure whether a topic is suitable to post about, ask your mentor. Personal health issues or matters should not be posted on the forums without prior discussion with your mentor regarding suitability.

When posting, only put one topic in each comment and give a clear title to the comment.

For example, here is a lovely post from a student that would be better divided into three posts:

A.'s post

Please find attached the info on the tree pruning as I explained in the webinar, sorry its taken a while to put this up. I attended a mini course by Anne Stobart who is the author of the Medicinal Forest Garden Handbook and i really like the fact that her recommendations for harvesting bark during routine pruning and maintenance to minimise impact on the trees health, thereby taking the bark from the branches removed rather than from the trunk which can lead to disruption of the trees food and water transport system and introduce pathogens.

I have been trying to get to grips with the ratios of tinctures and other preparations. I tried to make a 1:6 tincture with skullcap with 50g dried herb and 375ml of alcohol, after it had been sat for 24hours there wasn't enough liquid, so I’ve added more alcohol to cover the herb. I know i am terrible at maths, I usually make my tinctures by half filling a jar with herb if using dried and then fill to top with alcohol. I think i am getting confused with volume and weights/ml, any advice experiences would be greatly appreciated!!

My glycerite measurements was also way off and I can’t even pour it out the bottle (may be because i used powders, marshmallow root and a bit of slippery elm)!!

This would be best separated into:

Tree pruning

I attended a mini course by Anne Stobart who is the author of the Medicinal Forest Garden Handbook and i really like the fact that her recommendations for harvesting bark during routine pruning and maintenance to minimise impact on the trees health, thereby taking the bark from the branches removed rather than from the trunk which can lead to disruption of the trees food and water transport system and introduce pathogens.

Tincturing

I have been trying to get to grips with the ratios of tinctures and other preparations. I tried to make a 1:6 tincture with skullcap with 50g dried herb and 375 ml of alcohol, after it had been sat for 24 hours there wasn't enough liquid, so I added more alcohol to cover the herb. I know I am terrible at maths, I usually make my tinctures by half filling a jar with herbs if using dried and then fill to top with alcohol. I think I am getting confused with volume and weights/ml, any advice or experiences would be greatly appreciated!!

Glycerite

My glycerite measurements were also way off and I can't even pour it out of the bottle (maybe because I used powders, marshmallow root and a bit of slippery elm)!! Dividing the post in this way makes it easier for students to follow each topic and reply or read the one they are interested in.

If you want to put up collections of photographs of your plant ID, medicine-making exploits and so forth these should be put up in the gallery to avoid filling up the forum and a link made to the discussion forum for comments.