Brightspace Guide for Students - Posting in Discussions

Posting in Discussions

Discussions are used by professors to create activities in which you will share information and ideas with your classmates. While discussions are usually graded, some professors have one or more ungraded discussion topics for students to ask questions and receive help. You can see a listing of all Discussions in a course by navigating to the Assessments menu and selecting Discussions. Take a look at the Seeing all Course Activities page if you can't find it.

It's important to understand how Discussions in Brightspace are structured to avoid confusion. In summary, Forums contain Discussion Topics, which contain Threads. Threads contain a chain of Posts.

Video Tutorial

Learn how to participate in Discussions in this YouTube video, or scroll down to written instructions below.

Reminder

You can view a larger version of many of the images in this guide by selecting the gray button that appears in the corner when hovering over the image.

Forums

Forums contain a list of Discussion Topics. You can identify a Forum by its bold, black heading text when looking at the page you see after choosing Discussions from the Assessments menu.

To view a Discussion Topic, click or tap its blue heading.

The main page of the Discussions tool lists any Forums in the course and the Discussion Topics they contain. Click or tap a Discussion Topic's heading to view the list of Threads it contains.

Discussion Topics

Discussion Topics contain Threads where you will post material in response to questions or instructions from your professor.

Respond to your professor's questions or instructions by clicking or tapping the Start a New Thread button.
To view and reply to the posts inside of an already exsisting Thread, select its blue heading.

When viewing the contents of a Discussion Topic, you can click or tap a Thread's heading text to read the Posts it contains, or you can create a new original post that starts off a new Thread by selecting the Start a New Thread button.

Threads

Each Thread in a Discussion Topic is a chain of posts consisting of an original post made by you, a classmate, or your professor, and the reply posts others have made in response to the original post.

To post a reply to the Thread's original post, select the Reply to Thread button.
To post a reply to any of the other reply posts in the Thread, select the Reply link located beneath the reply you wish to respond to.

When viewing a Thread, its original Post will be displayed at the top, followed by a list of replies. You can either reply to the Thread's original Post by selecting the Reply to Thread button, or respond to another student's reply by selecting the Reply link beneath the post you want to respond to.

Posts

Creating a post is very similar to submitting a Text Assignment. When creating a new post, you'll use the Brightspace Editor to enter text, images, links, etc and/or attach files to the post.

When starting a new Thread, the top portion of the screen will contain your professor's instructions or questions.
When posting a Reply to another post, the top portion of the screen will display the content of the post you are replying to.
Attach files from your computer to the Post by clicking or tapping the Add Attachments button.
When finished, select the Post button at the bottom of the screen.

The Brightspace Editor appears when creating a new Post. If your post is the start of a new Thread, your professor's questions and instructions will appear above the editor. Otherwise, you'll see the content of the post you are replying to.

Alternate "Grid View" for the Discussion Topic Page

Some people are not fond of how Brightspace displays Discussion Topics and Threads. Fortunately, there are two different options for viewing course discussions: Reading View and Grid View. Reading View is the default way Brightspace uses to display Discussion Topics and is what's pictured in all of the screenshots up to this point. Grid View displays a tabular list of threads in the Discussion Topic with a panel beneath that displays the contents of the currently selected post, similar to traditional email client software, like Outlook or Thunderbird. If you would like to try Grid View, follow the steps below.

Important

Grid View may be awkward and difficult to use on mobile devices!

Grid View allows you to see the list of Threads in a Discussion Topic as well as the Posts inside them all on one screen.

To turn on Grid View:

Navigate to the Assessments menu and select Discussions.
Select the Settings button on the right side of the screen. (see the first screenshot on this page for illustration).
Under Default View, select Grid View.
Select the blue Save button.
Select any Discussion Topic to browse it in Grid View.
To switch back to Reading View, simply repeat these steps and choose Reading View in Step 3.

You can change the way Discussion Topics are displayed by selecting Grid View from the Discussions tool's Settings page.

Next: Taking Quizzes & Exams

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