Discussion Board Structure

Just as it is critical to plan and structure your course content, you need to provide structure for online discussions.

The main discussion board page displays a list of forums. A forum is where participants discuss a topic or a group of related topics. Within each forum, users can create multiple threads. A thread includes the initial post and all replies to it. You can create forums and threads to organize discussions into units or topics relevant to your course.

Discussions appear sequentially so that all course members can follow the conversation.

Discussion Board Page

The discussion board is commonly accessed from the course menu, although you can provide a link to it in another course area, such as in a content area.

The Discussion Board page contains a list of all the forums you've created. You must first create one or more forums before users can start message threads. You can also search for discussion content. By default, the search field appears collapsed to save screen space.

1. To sort the list based on a column, select the column heading.
2. To view the posts in a forum, select the forum title. Forum titles in bold contain unread posts.
3. For each forum, view the total number of posts, the number of unread posts, and the number of participants. For quick access to the forum's unread messages, select the link in the Unread Posts column.
    

Forum Page

When you access a forum, a list of threads appears.

1. When possible, use the breadcrumbs to navigate to a previous page. If you use the back function on your browser, you may see page load errors.
2. Within a forum, you can create threads, grade forum contributions, collect threads, and search content.
3. Use the check boxes to select one or more thread and perform actions such as Collect or Delete.
4. Select a thread title to read the posts. Titles in bold contain unread posts.
5. View a forum's threads in a list view or in a tree view, with all posts listed after each thread title.

More on creating forums
 

Thread Page

When you view a thread, all posts and the thread description appear on one page. You can use thread descriptions to prompt users to participate in the discussion. Each author's profile picture accompanies their posts to help you easily identify authors.

The editor appears immediately after the message you're replying to. You can refer to any post on the page while you type your reply.

1. Use Expand All and Collapse All to manage the visibility of posts on the page.
2. Move your mouse anywhere on the page and functions appear at the top, such as Search and Refresh.
3. Select the number of unread posts to view only those posts in a thread. Use the arrow buttons to navigate to other threads in the forum.
4. When you view threads, a badge appears next to a forum manager or moderator's name. Point to the badge to see the user's course role and forum role. Custom roles are displayed if your institution uses them.
5. View relative dates for posts, such as "7 days ago." When you point to the relative date, you can view the absolute date of creation or editing, and the number of views.
6. Mark posts as read or unread. Blue icon = unread. White icon = read. Only expanded posts that you view onscreen are marked as read. Posts are not automatically marked read by quickly scrolling down the page. Select the icon to manually change the status of a message. You can also flag posts you want to review again later or indicate as important.
7. Point to a post to see Reply, Quote, Expand/Collapse, and other available functions. Select Collapse to minimize a post. This increases the vertical screen space available for viewing posts.
8. If you enabled the rate posts feature in a forum's settings, Overall Rating displays the average rating for a post. When you point to the rating area, it changes to show Your Rating.
    

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