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The Discussion Board

Discussion Boards can appear in any area of a Blackboard course that an Instructor chooses. It is possible to create a general course forum for all students to access or group-specific private forums which are available only to selected members of the class.  

Discussion Boards are used for many reasons. For example, they can be used to ask students to prepare in advance of in-class discussions by having them pose questions they plan to address during class time. Or they can be used to prompt students to summarise or collaborate on questions around specific topics addressed in lectures. Blended learning programmes frequently make good use of discussion boards to engage students and promote participation on the module or programme activities. Keep this option in mind when designing your course.

 

Useful topics:

1. Create a forum
2. Posting a message (or thread) to a forum
3. Reply to a Discussion Board thread
4. Grading Discussion Board Participation
5. Peer Review Through the Discussion Board
6. Keeping the Discussion Board Content Safe
7. Incorporating Discussion Board Forums into other Areas of your Blackboard Course
8. Discussion Board Statistics

Create a forum

1. In the Content area of your course, under Add Interactive Tool, click Discussion Board.

2. Click the Create New Forum button. On the next page, give the forum a name, description and choose appropriate availability settings.

 

3. Under Forum Settings, choose any additional settings you wish to enforce for the forum, such as allowing file attachments, then click Submit.

 

4. You will then need to add a link to the forum in your course. To do this, click the button above your Course Menu and click Create Tool Link. Give the link a name, choose Discussion Board from the Type dropdown menu, tick the box to make Available to Users, then click the Submit button.

 

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Posting a message (or thread) to a forum

You will now post a message or thread to this forum. Threads are a series of posts related to a similar topic. When creating a forum, the Instructor has the option of allowing or not allowing users to start threads. If threads are graded, users cannot start threads. Generally, the purpose of the forum will dictate whether or not users can start threads. A moderated, graded forum used to evaluate student performance will usually be tightly controlled. In this case, it would not be appropriate to allow users to create threads. Other forums are designed for users to share opinions and thoughts on tangential or unrelated topics. In this case, it is safe to allow users to create threads and spark discussions.

• Click the name of the forum to enter. As this is currently empty you will first need to begin a new discussion thread.
• Click the Create Thread button.
• In the Subject field type the subject heading of your message.  
• In the Message field type your question or comment.
• Click Submit.
  
  

Your message will now be displayed within the discussion forum. Click the message title to view the message. You will see the Thread Detail page. This enables you to follow an ongoing discussion. The thread structure is listed first (at the moment there is only one message), followed by the message that started the thread. 

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Reply to a Discussion Board thread

This section will explain how to reply to a discussion board thread. Threads grow as users respond to the initial, and subsequent, posts. Replies build on one another to construct a conversation.

Follow these steps to reply to a post.

• Open a thread in a forum.
• Find a post.
• Next to the message click on the Reply button.
• Enter a Subject (optional) and Message for your reply.
• Click the Submit button to post your reply.
• Your reply will now be listed within the Discussion Boards thread.

Notice you can see tracking information about the messages, such as number of posts and number of views. There are also some extra tools to help manage messages in the Message Actions dropdown menu above the thread:

To use these tools you must first select the checkbox next to the message you wish to Flag. Flagging a message alerts you to messages you want to follow up. The Collect button enables you to compile messages into a single list for printing.

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Grading Discussion Board Participation

The Instructor has the option to grade Students at the forum level or at the thread level. In this way the Instructor can accurately compare Student participation to the expectations set forth.

Grading options are enabled when the forum is created or by modifying the forum. Click the context menu next to the forum you wish to modify, then click Edit. The Grade settings appear at the bottom of the Add Forum Page and the Edit Forum page.

Select Grade Discussion Forum and enter a point value to evaluate participants on performance throughout the forum. Select Grade Threads to evaluate participants on performance in each thread. When the Grade Threads option is used, a Points Possible option appears each time a thread is started.

Keep in mind that users cannot create new threads if Grade Threads is selected for the forum.

Follow these steps to evaluate performance in a forum.

1. Open the Discussion Board. A list of forums will appear. Click on the forum you wish to grade.

2. Click the Grade Forum button.

 

3. A list of users will appear. To grade a specific user, click the Grade button next to their details.

 

4. A collection of the user’s posts in the forum will appear. Evaluate the posts and assign a Grade.

5. Click the Submit button to add the grade to the Gradebook.

Follow these steps to evaluate performance within a thread.

• Open a Discussion Board and then open a forum and select a thread.
• Click Grade Thread. This button will only appear to users with a forum role of Grader or Manager.
• A list of users will appear. Click Grade for a user.
• A collection of the user’s posts in the Thread will appear. Evaluate the posts and assign a Grade. Click Submit to add the grade to the Gradebook.

Use the Modify Forum feature to change the grading option to select No Grading. If Grades have already been entered for the forum or its threads, a warning message will appear that changing the setting will remove the associated Gradebook Items. Click OK to continue or click Cancel to preserve the Gradebook Items.

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Peer Review Through the Discussion Board

A common learning tool in classrooms is providing feedback to other students on their work. Students prepare an essay, lab report, or presentation and share it with the class. Other students are asked to comment on the work and offer criticisms for improvement. This process helps the student improve their assignment, but is even more valuable to the students that review the work. Reviewing the work of another student enforces classroom learning and helps the reviewer practice important communication skills.
The Discussion Board is the perfect place in a course for peer review. Each student may start a thread and include their work in the initial post. Other students then review the work, assign a rating to the initial post, and include comments in a response. As users respond, the feedback expands as users reinforce and build on points made by other students.
Users can respond to a post using a 5-star rating system. To enable this feature, select Allow members to rate posts when creating the forum.

Open a thread and view the posts. Each post has an Overall Rating field with five stars. The stars show the overall rating that the post has received from users. Underneath Overall Rating is a Your Rating field, where users can assign their own rating to the thread. Your rating is now included in the Overall Rating. A user may not rate the same post more than once

Note: As thread starters are not able to rate their own posts, you will not be able to see the Your Rating field. However, other students and instructors will.

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Keeping the Discussion Board Content Safe

Discussion Boards give students the freedom to share their thoughts and opinions on class topics with other users. Occasionally, students may introduce material to the Discussion Board that is inappropriate for the class discussion. Depending on the maturity and the sensitivity of the students in the course, it may be important to review student posts for inappropriate content before sharing posts with the rest of the class. Instructors can assign Discussion Board users to act as Moderators. Moderators review posts before they are added to a thread and displayed to the class. The Moderator may be the Instructor or other responsible participants. It is also possible to prevent an individual user from posting at all. Assigning a user the role of Blocked will prevent the user from accessing the forum. Assigning an individual user the role of Reader will allow the user to view content in the Discussion Board but prevent the user from posting content.

The following settings are available when creating a Discussion Board to ensure that content is appropriate.

Setting	Description
Allow Anonymous Posts	If this feature is turned off users are identified by their username whenever they post a reply. Making members accountable for the content that they post is a deterrent for users that wish to post inappropriate content. Be careful when disabling this feature as there are instances where learning can benefit from anonymous posts, particularly when discussing sensitive topics If this feature is enabled, the forum cannot be graded.
Allow Authors to Delete Own Posts and Allow Author to Edit Own Published Posts	Members are deterred from posting inappropriate content if they do not have control of the content once it is posted.
Allow Members to Create New Threads	Preventing members from starting threads helps focus their posts on the topic.
Force Moderation of Posts	Moderating posts requires that all posts are reviewed by a responsible party before the content is shared with the class.

1. Open the Discussion Board.

2. Click the context menu next to the forum which you want to assign a moderator to and click Manage.

 

3. In the Manage Forum Users screen, tick the box next to the person you wish to make a moderator. Then, under the Edit Role dropdown menu, click Moderator.

 

Moderate a Forum

1. Open the forum you wish to moderate.

 

2. In the Moderation Queue screen, you'll see a list of posts to-be-moderated. To moderate a post, click the Moderate button next to the post.

 

3. In the Moderate Post screen, look in the Message field to see the post that was submitted. If you deem this post appropriate you can click the Submit button. If you feel the post is inappropriate or you have another reason not to accept the post, you can choose the Return radio button. You should then add a message to the text area below, which will be seen by the poster, before finally clicking the Submit button.

 

There may be an instance where a user should not be allowed to post at all because of past history of inappropriate posts or if the user has not been participating in discussions throughout the term. Assign a user the forum role of Reader if the user is allowed to view the forum but not add content. Assign a user the forum role of Blocked to prevent the user from accessing the forum.

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Incorporating Discussion Board Forums into Other Areas of your Blackboard Course

Discussion Board forums can be accessed from the Discussion Board link in the Course Menu, which lists all the forums in the course. This centralized view is an easy access point, but there are other ways to access Discussion Board forums that immerse the user in the learning experience.
For example, Discussion Board forums can be placed in any content area. Thus, a Discussion Board forum may appear following lecture notes on the same topic. Further, using adaptive release or date availability restrictions, the forum may only appear after users complete the lesson or after the Instructor has delivered the lecture in class.

Discussion Board links are subject to date restrictions and adaptive release restrictions. When restrictions are in place users cannot access the forum from within the content area or from within the Discussion Board tool. The Instructor always has access to every forum through the Control Panel.

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Discussion Board Statistics

The Performance Dashboard keeps track of user activity throughout the course, including the Discussion Board. This information can help Instructors quickly identify students that are outside the normal range of participation. Instructors can use this information to reward achievement and assist students that are struggling with the material.

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Miscellaneous

Edit your posts

If after posting your reply you wish to make corrections to your response, navigate to your response and click the Edit button located in the top-right corner of your post.

Make your corrections to your message and click the Submit button. Your post will be replaced with your corrected message.

Note: In order to edit posts, the forum creator must have ticked the Allow Author to Edit Own Published Posts option.