Discussion Board Best Practices

A Brief Introduction to Online Discussions 

First, you should know that discussion boards were one of the first ways people connected in the early days of the Internet and the World Wide Web. There were no blogs or comment features on websites back then. No social media sites existed, so you could easily create profiles and share photos. You couldn't even leave reviews!

There were, however, message boards! 

If you use Reddit, Quora, or Stack Overflow, you probably know how discussion boards (forums) work. 

Our LMS, Brightspace, sets up Discussions like this... 

Forums --> Topics --> Threads

So, for instance, you will post or reply to a Thread in the Unit 0: Email Reflection Topic found in the Unit Activity Discussion Forum. 

Discussion Tips

1. Use descriptive titles!

   • If all the thread titles of this discussion are "Email Reflection," or "My Email Reflection," or "Ty's Email Reflection," how does that help anyone? Provide a brief, insightful title like "CC and BCC were interesting!" or "Replying vs. Forwarding."

2. Before you post to a topic, you can just read the current threads to see what others have already shared.

   • This way, we can avoid duplication. We want to host a DISCUSSION, not 24 threads with the same information. 

3. Subscribe

   • You can subscribe to a forum or thread to be notified if someone responds. Subscribe to your thread to keep track of the conversation. Remember, be active!