Welcome to Blackboard Training, brought to you by the Center for Innovation at Indiana Wesleyan University. In this training you will learn to use the various features of the Blackboard discussion board tool. Written instructions for this training are available at the bottom of your screen. Throughout a course the discussion board allows you to exchange ideas with the class and faculty in asynchronous forums. You can participate in the dialogue by posting and responding to questions and statements called discussion threads. The Blackboard discussion forum provides you the ability to engage in the type of dynamic interaction that is a highlight of the college classroom. Most discussions are graded to encourage class participation and thoughtful analysis. You should be sure to familiarize yourself with the rubric being used to grade discussions in your class. The Discussion Board button on the left side of your screen provides access to all open Forums used in your course. Links to specific forums may appear in various areas, but the Discussion Board tool centralizes all the forums used within the course. If your class includes small groups, you may also have a private Discussion Board with forums available only to those users who are a part of your group. When you open the Discussion Board tool, you will only see those forums you can access. Unavailable Forums can only be viewed by Faculty, Administrators, and other user roles with similar permissions. When navigating the Discussion Board, use the internal navigation such as the breadcrumbs, course menu, and other page links to return to a previous page. To view a discussion forum, click the forum name to view its contents. When viewing the discussion board you will see that you have two options: tree view and list view. Both formats allow you to read and reply to posts, though each has its own look and feel. Choose which format matches your navigation style. The selected view will be highlighted on your screen. The List View provides a column view of the forum. The columns include: the date and time the posting was made, thread title, author, status, number of unread postings, and total postings. Each column is searchable and you can select the arrow on the title bar of a column to arrange it in ascending or descending order. You will notice that only the initial postings are displayed. These are sometimes called parent threads. Your only indication of replies is the number listed under total number of postings. Whenever additional postings are made to the thread, the parent thread displays in bold type and the number of unread posts will appear under the unread posts column. To view all the posts in a thread, select the post title. Under tree view, the initial postings and all associated replies are listed. Replies are sometimes called children. You can use the plus and minus buttons in front of an individual thread to expand or collapse only that thread. The titles of unread messages will be displayed in bold type. To read a posting, select the title. From the forum screen you can subscribe to a forum. Doing this provides you with an email alert whenever the forum is updated. From this screen you can also access the collect feature. Collect allows you to open any number of discussion postings on the same screen by simply checking the small box beside each title and selecting collect. The message actions drop down allows you to mark all checked messages as read or unread or to flag or unflag them for follow-up. Selecting Create Thread allows you to create a new discussion thread in the forum. This opens the create thread window which includes three sections. Message, Attachments, and Submit. In the message section type a subject for the thread. After doing this you will type the body of your message in the window provided. If the text editor is turned on (by selecting the button on the upper right side of the message window) you can access many of the functionalities available in Microsoft Word. You will also have the ability to embed files, images, video, audio, Flash, and other media into your posting. In the attachment section of this window, you can choose to upload a file to your post. This file will then be available for download in the discussion forum. Following this, you can cancel, save your thread as a draft, or submit. If you choose save, you can find you draft in the forum in which you were working. To continue working on the draft, just click to open it to make any additions or changes. Then submit. The process for replying to a posting is similar. When viewing a posting, select reply and a reply to post window will open. You’ll notice that it mirrors the create thread window with the exception of the subject line. This is already filled with the title of the post to which you are replying.