The Discussions feature on Blackboard allows you to share your thoughts and ideas about course topics. You, your classmates, and your instructor can have conversations asynchronously, meaning not everyone has to be online at the same time to add their thoughts, comments, and/or questions. You can post to discussion boards at any time (unless your instructor has set a date by which you must contribute), and you can take your time to carefully consider your responses.
Some ways you may use Discussions may include:
When you click on a forum, a list of threads appears.
Image courtesy of Blackboard Help
A. Use the breadcrumbs to navigate to a previous page instead of the back button to avoid error messages.
B. Use the top menu to create a new thread, view grade information, and search threads.
C. Use the checkboxes to select multiple threads and click the "Thread Actions" button towards the bottom of the screen to combine threads or mark them as read
D. Click the blue hyperlinked title of each thread to read all the posts in that thread. Bold titles indicate that the thread has unread posts in it.
E. View threads in List View (in a table format, default) or Tree View (with a thread starter post and all replies to that thread visible). If you do not see any threads in a forum, you may need to switch from List View to Tree View.
In a discussion forum, threads grow as users reply to posts. As replies build on one another, a conversation develops.
To reply to a published thread within a forum:
Image courtesy of Blackboard Help
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