Discussion Board (SMCC TLC)

Discussion Board

The Discussion board allows asynchronous communication between yourself and your students. The Instructor creates a forum from which the students submit responses ("threads") and replies to other students' responses.

It is best to begin with a strategy of how you wish to use the Discussion Board and to set up parameters for your students. For instance, you could require that students post a response to the forum question and reply to at least two other students. You should set a deadline for submissions.

You can also use the Groups function to break class discussions into smaller groups.

Each forum should support a main topic of dicussion point, based on a class assignment, theme, or subject item. You can have as amny forums as you want. Only an instructor can add a forum.

Advantages	Disadvantages
1. Time and place independence.	1. Those with poor writing skills may be at a disadvantage.
2. Time between messages allows for reflection.	2. Absence of non-linguisitic clues.
3. Non-English speakers have added time to read and compose answers.	3. Socailly opaque. Writer may not know audience.
4. All students have a voice.	4. Time lag may affect the exchanges.
5. Answers to questions can be seen by all.	5. Context and references may be unclear.
6. Discussion potentially richer than F2F.	6. Misunderstandings may be harder to overcome.

Planning Your Discussion Forum

The Discussion Board can be used to create a sense of community in a hybrid/online class.

The discussion board forum should contribute to an course objective.

The instructor should provide clear instructions.

What is the time frame for participation?
What is an acceptable length for the thread/post?
How much participation is expected of each student?
What is appropriate for the student to post?
--Netiquette --Discourse type (scholarly, informal . . .)

Check out the attached articles (below) on effective use of the Discussion Board.

Faculty Interviews regarding use of the Discussion Board from UT

"Evidence is becoming more and more clear that simply delivering

content online will not allow for substantive learning. Rather, substantive

learning occurs only when students are required to interact in meaningful ways."

-- Dave S. Knowlton, EdD, Online Classrom, April 2009

Adding Forums

Navigate to the Control Panel and select Discussion Board.
Click the Add Forum button.
At the Add Forum screen, give the forum a Name. If the forum will be graded, keep the name short as this becomes the name of the column in the gradebook. Provide a Description for the forum (e.g. either a short sentence informing students this is the forum for Week x or a description of what the students will be talking about – what question will they be answering).
Decide upon forum availability and desired date/time restrictions.
For the Forum Settings, decide on what you want to allow students to do in the discussion. Based on instructor experience, we suggest you do NOT allow anonymous posts and do NOT allow author to remove or modify own post. Leave these items unchecked.	See Attachment for complete discussion of Forum Settings.
Click Submit.

More Tools in Discussion Board

Discussion Board contains such features as grading, flagging, moderating, email alerts and conducting "peer review."

Using the List View Main Action Bar

Using the Tree View Main Action Board

The Tree View action bar is slighlty different than the List View Action Bar. You can still add threads, remove and collect postings, and mark threads as read and unread.

Using Tree View you can set and clear flags and display all of the thread posts in one list. To view all messages in the forum, click the Expand All button (located on toolbar below all the messages.). Notice that you cannot grade the forum using Tree View. This is the same toolbar you see when viewing a thread.

Grading Forums or Threads

You must be in List View in order to do discussion board grading. Depending on which option you chose when creating the forum, you can grade the whole forum or grade each thread separately.

Step 1:	From the forum level (or the thread level), click Grade Forum (or Grade Thread ).
Step 2:	Click Grade next to the student name.
Step 3:	Enter the point score in the Grade text box, then click Submit.
	If you need to clear the grade, click the Clear Grade button.
	Click OK

􀀄 Disabling the grade option later (by modifying the forum settings) will wipe out any grades that had been entered.

􀀄 You can print, mark postings as read or unread, reply or quote when grading student’s post(s).

Rating a Post

In addition to commenting on a post, students can rate the post on a five-star rating system. This provides a "peer review" option for the forum.

Step 1:	From the Discussion Board page, add or modify the forum.
Step 2:	From the Forum Settings section, select Allow Members to Rate Posts.
Step 3:	Click Submit , then open the forum.
Step 4:	Open a thread and select a post (other than your own). The following is displayed on the right side of the post header.
Step 5:	Choose a rating from the pull-down menu, then click Rate. This action is final – you cannot go back and change your rating!

Printing a List of Threads or Posts

Step 1:	Select the postings to be collected, by checking the box next to each.
	To quickly select all, click Go next to Select All.
Step 2:	Click Collect
Step 3:	Click Print .

Flagging Posts

You or you students may wish to "flag" selected posts, perhaps for reviewing again at a later date.

Step 1:	Select the post(s) to be flagged, by checking the box next to it.
Step 2:	Click Flag. The red flag symbol appears next to the posting.
	To remove the flag, select the posting, then click Clear Flag.

Sorting Posts

By default, the messages are sorted by date. You can sort the messages by thread title, author, etc., by clicking on the triangle above the column heading when in List View.

Searching a Discussion Board Forum

You can search for messages in a discussion board forum using the Search feature. This is particularly helpful if you need to find the responses written by one student. You can search at the discussion board, forum or thread level.

Step 1:	Click the Search button to open the search pane.
Step 2:	Enter the text in the Search text box.
	You can specify a specific date range when the item was published by checking the boxes and indicating the dates.
	You can determine how broad the search will be by choosing a specific option from the in drop-down box (below the Search box).
Step 3:	Click Go. The search results appear, sorted by author.
	Using the Print button, you can print out the search results.
	􀂾 Using the Sort by drop-down menu, you can change the sort order.
	􀂾 Using the Filter drop-down menus, you can limit the display to show only a specific author and/or status of post
Step 4:	Click to close the search results and return.

Changing the Status of Threads

By default, threads are "published," which means they are immediately available and visible to the group and can be modified or rated (if enabled). If needed, the instructor can change threads from "published" to a different status:

The message under the Status column changes to the status you selected.

Filtering Threads

You and your students can limit the display of threads by selecting options from the Display drop-down menu located on the toolbar below all the messages.:

Preventing Changes in Thread Content

After students have submitted their threads/posts, you can make them "read-only;" additions, deletions and modifications cannot be made to the thread contents by anyone.

Step 1: Select the thread(s) to be locked, by checking the box next to it.

Step 2: Select Locked from the Change Status to drop-down menu and click the Go button. . The message under the Status column changes to "Locked" for that thread.

􀂾 To remove a lock, use the same steps, but select Unlocked.

Moderating a Forum

As described above, submissions made by the group are, by default, immediately published. However, you have the option of controlling the flow of this publishing by turning on a moderator setting when creating or modifying the forum. This lets you review submissions before they go public.

Step 1:
From the Discussion Board page, add or modify a forum.

Step 2:
From the Forum Settings section, select Force moderation of posts.

Step 3:
Click . Any submission made after enabling this setting will not be published automatically. New threads submitted do not display and new posts display the text (Moderation Queue) next to them.

Step 4:
From either the forum level or within a specific thread, click . A list of "quarantined" threads and posts appear.

Step 5:
Click to the right of an item. The contents of the post appear, along with the option to either publish or return the message, with the option of sending a private message back to the student.

Step 6:
After choosing the desired option, click . The item is removed from the moderation queue page.

NOTE:
If you change the moderation setting after students have posted to the forum, those postings may seem to "disappear." To get them back, enable moderation, moderate the postings and then disable moderation.

Being Alerted to New Submissions

You or your students can be alerted, via email, to new submissions to a forum.

Step 1:
From the Discussion Board page, add or modify a forum.

Step 2:
From the Forum Settings section, select the desired option from Subscribe (do not allow, allow to subscribe to threads or allow to subscribe to forums)..

Step 3:
Click . All group members now have the option of subscribing to a discussion forum or to selected threads, depending on the subscribe option set by the instructor.

Step 4:
If "subscribe to forum" was set by the instructor, you would click at the top of the screen when you first enter the discussion. Anytime anything is posted to that discussion forum, you will receive an email alerting you to the new post. If "subscribe to threads" was set by the instructor, you would click while reading a particular thread or post. Anytime a reply is submitted to that particular post, you will receive an email alerting you to the new post.

NOTE:
If a student has not entered their email address in Blackboard, they will not be able to subscribe to Discussion Boards.

"Add Forum" Settings

Setting	Remarks	Default Selection
Allow anonymous posts	Useful when discussing sensitive topics.	Off
Allow author to remove OR modify own posts	Gives students ability to change their minds.	Off
Allow post tagging	Gives the instructor the ability to "tag" a post with keywords or phrases. Tags display in the discussion board forum for all users.	Off
Allow users to reply with quote	Gives students and instructor the ability to reply to a message with the original message quote4d in the body of the reply.	Off
Allow file attachments	A single file (text, spreadsheet, etc.) can be uploaded to a thread or post. (Setting affects both instructor and students.)	On
Allow members to create new threads	By turning this setting off, you could divide the discussion into subtopics. That is, the instructor creates threads for each subtopic to be discussed, and students	On

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