ITL Links • Getting Started With Blackboard • Designing Your Blackboard Site • Adding Users to Blackboard • Adding Content to Blackboard • The Gradebook • Using Quizzes • Online Discussions • Collaboration • Blackboard Tools
Using On-Line Discussions in Blackboard is one of the easiest ways to begin fostering on-line collaboration. This tool will help "engage" students and foster a community within your individual class. On-Line Discussions can be a very valuable component to a face-to-face course, especially on a commuter campus like UIC. These Discussion Forums provide a venue for "asynchronous communication". They provide a public forum and are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; they make "anywhere/anytime" learning a possibility. Forums can be set up on a topic by topic basis and customized with a host of different participation options.
Discussion forums allow you to:
To create a Discussion Forum login to your site and click "Contol Panel>Discussion Boards>Add Forum". Provide a name and description for this forum.
The next step is to assign forum settings. Check off the appropriate boxes for the different settings that you'd like to apply to this forum:
These settings are fairly straightforward. At the bottom of the page you have the ability to assign different access levels on a user by user basis, or to block participants entirely from participating.
If you assign administrative access to a user they will be able to assist in the management of this specific forum. This will give them the ability to create archives, lock threads, and remove messages. By default the only people with administrative access to a forum will be those with instructor access.
Once you have adjusted the settings for this forum accordingly click the button labeled "Submit". You will receive a confirmation that the forum has been created. After the forum has been created users can login to the site, browse to the forum, and begin adding messages by using the "Add Thread" button.
This button adds top level threads, while clicking on the reply button while reading a thread allows users to respond to each other.
When users reply to each other you will see the replies to main threads indented. This will help you keep track of who is responding to who; this is the fundamental principle of a threaded discussion.
If you ever wish to change forum settings log back in to your course site and click "Contol Panel>Discussion Boards>Add Forum" and then click the button labeled "Modify" next to the forum in question.
To manage a forum you must have instructor access to the forum itself. All the instructors and TAs of course site will have the ability to manage forums. In addition, at the time of forum creation, or by modifying the forum settings you can give any user of the course site administrative rights by highlighting their name and clicking the button labled "Admin". The screen will refresh and an "A" will appear next to their name.
This means that the user will have access to the Administrative Control Panel. This control panel can be accessed by logging in to the specific forum in question and then clicking on the button labeled "Show Options" or the little red triangle.
Clicking on these buttons will open up the Discussion Forum management toolbar. This toolbar allows you to perform a variety of functions on individual forums.
To select all of the messages in a forum click on the "select all" button. To unselect all of the messages click on the "unselect" button. The "Invert" button allows you to invert the checkmarks you just made. The "Read" and "Unread" buttons allows you to mark individual messages as either "read" or "unread" by selecting an individual message by placing a checkmark in the box next to it, and then clicking the button. The "Collect" button allows you to view a series of selected messages in sequence, as opposed to having to click on each message individually to read them.
If you wish to prevent users from responding to a topic or thread select the main thread in the forum and then click the button labeled "Lock". This will prevent people from replying to that message, as well as all subsequent replies. Highlighting the main thread again and then clicking "Unlock" will allow people to reply to that thread once again.
The "Remove" button will delete a message from a forum entirely. **PLEASE NOTE** When a user with administrative access removes a message from a forum it will disappear from EVERYONES view of the forum. This is a public discussion board - any message that gets "removed" from the forum is gone for good.
Instuctors will often want to print the entire content of a thread or series of threads for reading offline. If a user attempts to print from the main course site view of the Discussion Forum this will create problems, due to the Blackboard frames layout. To format the content of a discussion forum for printing follow these steps:
Administering Threaded Discussion
Forums
One of the most frequently asked questions about the use of threaded discussion
to supplement face-to-face classes is "How will I find the time to read all
the posts?". The key to managing and using threaded discussions successfully
is to not feel obligated to respond to every post. The nature of threaded discussions
fosters an environment where all parties are encouraged to participate and input
from all users is valuable and appreciated. A commonly used model for fostering
participation in on-line threaded discussions is as follows:
Blackboard
Login
Request Blackboard Training
Online Blackboard Training
Request
Blackboard Support
Request
A Blackboard Site
Student
Blackboard Support
FAQs
How To Guides
Documentation
Last Modified: July 8, 2005 - Instructional Technology Lab