Blackboard Academic Suite
Overview
User Manual
The Discussion Board is another communication tool that can be used to enhance a course Web site. Topics are posted to the Discussion Board that course participants can reply to and converse about on-line. This feature is similar to the Lightweight
Chat, but is designed for asynchronous use, meaning Students do not have to be online at the same time to have a conversation. An additional advantage of the
Discussion Board is that Student conversations are logged and organized.
Conversations are grouped into threads that contain a main posting and all related replies for easy retrieval.
Note:
Users may have the option to create Discussion Boards on topics of interest in the Community Common area. This option is made available by the System
Administrator. For more information on this topic see Creating Community Discussion
Boards in the Community Tab section.
Find this page
Follow the steps below to open the Discussion Board page.
Step 1
Step 2
Open a course Web site for a course that you are participating in.
Click
Discussion Board
Center. on the Course Menu or from the Communication
Function
To access a forum listed on the Discussion Board page click a forum topic link. The
Discussion Board forum will appear. The system will not accept JavaScript in the
Discussion Boards.
© 2004 Blackboard Inc. Proprietary and Confidential Page 67
Blackboard Academic Suite User Manual
Overview
The Discussion Board is a communication tool that can be used to enhance a course
Web site. Instructors create forums on specific topics in the Discussion Board. For example, an Instructor may create a Mid-Term Review forum, where Students may go ask and answer questions about the Mid-Term exam. Students may access forums by clicking on the appropriate link in the Discussion Board. When a forum is accessed a page appears which lists the different threads in the forum. A thread is a message that is posted to a forum. Participants can post new threads in a forum and reply to threads that have already been posted.
Note
: Students are able to create new threads on the Discussion Board. If allowed by the Instructor a Student can create a forum, otherwise Students will only be able to add threads to existing topics.
Find this page
Follow the steps below to open the Discussion Board Forum page.
Step 1
Step 2
Click
Discussion Board
on the course menu.
Click a forum to open it and view the contents within.
Functions
The table below details the functions available on the Discussion Board Forum page.
To . . .
start a new thread
click . . .
Add New Thread
. The Create New Message page will appear. On the Create New Message page a new subject title and discussion description may be added. view all messages the
View all Messages
up arrow. All messages appear. view unread messages the
View Unread Messages
down arrow. All unread
© 2004 Blackboard Inc. Proprietary and Confidential Page 68
Blackboard Academic Suite User Manual
see all the threads and responses see only the first message in each thread read a message messages will be shown. the the
Expand All
appear. appear.
plus icon. All threads and responses will
Collapse All
minus icon. The topic threads will view the tool bar view messages that have been archived by the Instructor resort the list of messages a message link. A new Discussion Board page will appear. Depending on their course role, users may modify, remove, or reply to a message.
Options
tab. The Options tool bar will appear.
Click Here for Archives.
A page will appear with the threads that have been archived from this forum.
Archived messages must be made available by the
Instructor. the
Sort by:
drop-down list and select one of the following options:
Default: sort messages by the earliest date.
Author: sort messages by the author.
Date: sort messages by the earliest date. This is the default.
Subject: sort messages by the subject.
Options tab functions
The table below describes the functions available on the Options tab. Click
Show
Options
to access these functions. To select multiple threads in a forum, choose the check box next to each thread that will be included.
To . . .
select all threads and messages in the forum unselect the selections unselect the threads and messages that have been selected and select the threads and messages that have not been selected mark messages as read click
Select All
.
then . . .
click click
Unselect All
Invert
.
. mark messages as unread view multiple threads or messages lock a thread or message select the threads and messages, then click
Read
. select the threads and messages, then click
Unread
. select the threads and messages, then click
Collect
. select the thread and messages, then click
Lock
.
© 2004 Blackboard Inc. Proprietary and Confidential Page 69
Blackboard Academic Suite User Manual
Overview
When a new message is posted to a forum it starts a thread. All responses to the message appear under the message on the Discussion Board forum. The Create New
Message page is used to add a new thread to a Discussion Board Forum.
Find this page
Follow the steps below to open the Create New Message page.
Step 1
Click
Discussion Board
on the course menu or from the Communication
Center.
Step 2
Click on a forum link to open it and view the contents within.
Step 3
Click
Add New Thread
.
Fields
The table below details the fields on the Create New Message page.
Field
Message Information
Current Forum:
Description
Date:
Author:
Subject:
The name of the Discussion Board Forum appears in this field.
The date appears in this field.
The name of the author appears here.
Enter the subject of the thread.
© 2004 Blackboard Inc. Proprietary and Confidential Page 70
Blackboard Academic Suite
Message:
User Manual
Post message as
Anonymous
Attachment
Enter a message. The following options are available:
Smart Text: Automatically recognizes a link entered in the text box. Smart text recognizes the ENTER key as a paragraph tag and accepts
HTML tags as well. Smart Text will also prompt to load images if an image source text is used when adding smart text as part of a content
item.
Plain text: Displays text as written.
HTML: Displays text as coded using HTML tags.
√ x: Opens the WebEQ Equation Editor .
< > Opens the MathML Equation Editor .
Preview: Opens the text as it will appear to the user.
Select this check box and the message will be posted anonymously. The Instructor may make this feature unavailable.
Enter the file path or click
Browse
to locate the file.
© 2004 Blackboard Inc. Proprietary and Confidential Page 71
Blackboard Academic Suite User Manual
Overview
Users add message to threads by posting messages in response to the previous messages in the thread. Messages are added to a thread from the Your Response page.
Find this page
Follow the steps below to open the Your Response page:
Step 1
Click
Discussion Board
on the Course menu or from the Communication
Center.
Step 2
Click on a forum link to open it and view the contents within.
Step 3
Open a message.
Step 4
Click
Reply
to respond to the message.
Fields
The table below details the fields on this page.
Field
Message Information
Current Forum:
Date:
Author:
Subject:
Description
The name of the Discussion Board Forum appears in this field.
The date appears in this field.
The name of the author appears here.
Subject defaults to the subject on the Add Thread page.
© 2004 Blackboard Inc. Proprietary and Confidential Page 72
Blackboard Academic Suite
Message:
Options
Post message
Anonymous
Attachment
Preview
User Manual
Enter a message. The following options are available:
Smart Text: Automatically recognizes a link entered in the text box. Smart text recognizes the ENTER key as a paragraph tag and accepts
HTML tags as well. Smart Text will also prompt to load images if an image source text is used when adding smart text as part of a content
item.
Plain text: Displays text as written.
HTML: Displays text as coded using HTML tags.
√ x: Opens the WebEQ Equation Editor .
< > Opens the MathML Equation Editor .
Preview: Opens the text as it will appear to the user
Select the check box to post an anonymous message.
This option may or may not be available depending on the options selected when Discussion Forum was set up.
Enter the file path or click
Browse
to locate the desired file.
Preview the message as it will appear on the Discussion
Board.
© 2004 Blackboard Inc. Proprietary and Confidential Page 73
* Your assessment is very important for improving the work of artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
© 2021