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Discussion Boards (Quick Guide) eLearning Blackboard Learn 9.1 for Faculty

Discussion Boards are one of Blackboard’s most powerful collaboration tools. If you’re new to Discussion Boards on the internet, this document will first define some terminology for you to get acquainted. Discussion Boards are set up in hierarchies, and there are several ways to organize them.

1. Discussion Board – This is your overall area for discussions. There are TWO types of Discussion Boards you’ll encounter. The Course Discussion Board, and IF you make groups and give them access to the discussion board tool, you will have Group Discussion Boards for each group.

2. Forum – This is your top-level discussion topic. ONLY THE PROFESSOR can create a forum

3. Thread – This is the next level down from forums. When you create a forum, you can opt to give students the ability to create threads, OR you can create threads yourself. Most professors would give their students permissions to do so.

4. Comment – These can be made by anybody in the course, and are typically replies to threads.

Some common setups:

1. Forums are general topics, such as “Introduce Yourself” Threads are made by students, within the guidelines set by the professor Comments are replies from one student or professor to each other.

2. Forums are general topics, such as “World War 2 Battles” Threads are professor OR student made, such as “Normandy” Comments are replies.

a. This format can be set up such that the professor might make a few threads about various battles and students can put their input (comments) into one or more of them –or–The students can make a thread about a battle that interests them, and others can reply and comment to their peers.

It is good practice to have an idea as to how you want this set up BEFORE you continue on the following pages. If you’re still unsure, but are confident that you want to use Discussion Boards, please contact [email protected] to schedule an appointment with an instructional designer to assist you in developing your discussions.

mailto:[email protected]


Getting Started: Creating a Forum To get started, access the Discussion area via your course menu and click Create Forum

You’ll be brought to the Create Forum page, where you’ll have to fill out some basic information.

After you fill out a name and description (Also can be used as instructions), you’ll have your forum availability options.


This is how you make your forum available to students. You can set date restrictions if you would like as well. *Recommendation: It’s fine to set a beginning time (Display After) for your forum, as a forum instruction or description could potentially give information you may not want your students to yet have. It is NOT recommended to have the forum expire. In many cases, after you’re done grading or reviewing a forum, students will ignore the forum unless they need something from it as a reference. If you don’t want them to change an answer or reply, you can turn off their ability to edit a post or comment. Now, you have to set your Forum Settings

In the first set of options, we suggest leaving them as default, or as seen in this image. The only option you might want to change is whether or not you want students to be able to create new threads.


These options are typically going to be customized slightly more.

Subscribe: Subscriptions to Threads and Forums are sent to users by email.

Once a subscription option is selected, users can select: o Include body of post in the email: The entire post is sent in the body of

the email message. o Include link to post: A link to the post is sent in the body of the email

message. Allow Members to Rate Posts: Students can rate the quality of the post using

a five star system. Force Moderation of Posts: This requires all messages to be reviewed by a

professor before they can be published to the forum. The instructor is the manager of the forum and can moderate all posts.

Alignments: Are for Blackboard Alignments. WE DO NOT SUPPORT ALIGNMENTS. PLEASE IGNORE THIS FEATURE

*Grading on next page


Grading:

Posts can be graded in two ways:

Students can have their overall participation in a forum graded, creating a single column in the grade center and requires a Points Possible entry.

Students can be graded on a thread-by-thread basis, which creates a column in the grade center when the professor creates a new thread. The forum CANNOT set students to create threads if this option is selected. We recommend NOT using this option.

If you opt to Grade Threads, you will have to choose whether or not forum posts appear in Needs Grading.

If you opt to Grade Discussion Forum, you will see that, and options for rubrics.

You can add or create an interactive rubric with this button.


Adding Threads After you create your forum, threads can be created by you, or if you allowed students to create threads, by them (Option to choose this is found on page 3). Note: If you want your students to create threads, this information will simply be for your knowledge. In this case, you would not need to do any further steps. You can skip to page 8 to learn how to add comments to students’ posts. Creating threads is a simple process, similar to that of creating the forum, but with fewer requirements. After you create the forum, you’ll be brought back to your discussion board. To create a thread within that forum, click the forum name.

Then click Create Thread

*Grade Forum will appear if you opted to have the forum graded.


Fill in the fields and upload any attachments you want to include. Students may upload attachments if you give them the option to, as seen on page 3.

Click Submit when finished. You will see your Thread on the Forum page.

To organize, you can click the column headers to arrange by date, name, etc. You can use the checkboxes to select threads and perform multiple actions. Collect will “collect” all checked items and display them, so you can view multiple threads at once.


Commenting on a thread From the forum, access the thread by clicking the thread title.

Detail on following page


The top portion will display threads and their comments in a tree-like style. You can select multiple threads with the checkboxes and click Collect to view a thread and all comments at once.

To view posts, simply click the title of the thread or reply. It will appear at the bottom portion of the display.

You can scroll through the different posts with the arrows next to the title. The buttons on the right will allow you to reply (comment), quote (If you allowed the setting on page 3) Edit posts that are yours. Flag the thread/comment for content to notify the professor. Delete the thread/comment.

discussion boards (quick guide) elearning blackboard learn ... · discussion boards (quick guide)...

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