Course wide setting that affects student role in forums

A teacher reported to me that the student in his class could not post to the first forum.  In other words, the student role did not have permission to post questions to the forum.  In could have been a forum type issue or a permission issue - but, today anyway, turns out to be a course setting that created and solved the problem.

Problem: student role cannot see button in a forum to post a question or reply to one.

That yes in the Force group mode setting was causing the student role to not see the Submit button in the course forums.  The students could not post a question, or respond to one posted by the teacher.

We have 18 courses from this vendor and this was the only course whose Force group mode was set to yes. 

Make sure this is how your course looks!

the end.