Video Transcript

How to Post to a Discussion Board. Some of the courses that you are enrolled in may use discussion boards. The Discussion Board is a communication medium for posting and responding to messages. This video will guide you through the steps you need to take to access and use discussion boards. Once you have logged into Blackboard and entered a course, you may notice a link to a discussion board for the course. This link may have a title such as Discussions, Discussion Board, or perhaps even Forums. Use your mouse to select this link. The main parts of a discussion board are forums and threads. You can think of a forum as a unique online discussion about a particular topic, and a thread as your response to the discussion board forum. Since discussion boards will contain multiple layers or pages, it is important to understand how to navigate them. You can access a forum by clicking on its link with your mouse. Once you have entered a forum, you can view the forum in either a List View or a Tree View. In a list view, you have to click on the thread title to see its replies. In a tree view, you can expand the individual message threads to see all of its replies at once. This can be done by using your mouse to click on the Expand and Collapse buttons beside the thread titles. Regardless of the view you are using, you can use your mouse to click on the link to a thread, and you will be directed to a new page called the Thread Detail, where you can read and interact with the messages in the thread. The list of messages related to the thread is now shown on the Thread Detail page. An indented message title indicates a reply to the message immediately above. New or unread messages are indicated in boldface font. Click on a link to select and read the message. The content of the message and details about that message are listed at the bottom. These controls allow you to navigate to the previous or next thread in the forum, without needing to return to the List View or the Tree View page. In the Message Content Area, these controls allow you to navigate between the messages within a thread. When you are not viewing the Parent Post, which is the top-most message or discussion question in the thread, you can display it by selecting the Parent Post link with your mouse. There are two main actions you can perform when posting messages to a Discussion Board. These are creating threads, and replying to existing threads. The availability of these actions depends on your instructor’s preferences for the forum. In one forum, you may see all of these buttons; while in another you may only see the Reply button. In other cases, posting may be restricted altogether, such as at the end of a discussion activity when the instructor locks threads or makes the whole forum read-only access. To create a thread, use your mouse to select the Create Thread button. You will be directed to a page where you can create and submit your thread. Note that when you are ready to submit your thread, do so by selecting the Submit button with your mouse. You may see two reply buttons when reading messages in a forum: Reply and Quote. If Quote is available, you may find it more useful since the message to which you are replying is embedded within your text entry area, just like in standard email. If it is unavailable, you will need to select the Reply button. Here’s a tip: Whether replying or quoting a message, a good practice is to clear the subject heading and enter a new subject heading to identify the purpose and intent of your reply. Meaningful and descriptive titles will make it easier for you and other students to see the direction and flow of the discussions when viewing the index of messages in a thread. When you have completed typing your reply to a thread, you can submit your reply by selecting the Submit button with your mouse. Once you submit or publish messages to a forum, your instructor or leader determines if you can edit and/or delete your published messages. The Edit and Delete privileges can both be granted or just one or the other. These buttons appear with the Reply button in the message content area. The availability of the Delete button may be conditional if your message has replies. The instructor or leader can allow you to delete all your posts, including any replies, or limit the Delete option to only posts that have no replies yet. So if you see the Delete button in some cases, but not others, it's because you are not allowed to delete your own posts if there are replies. This will be the most likely scenario. You will have the ability to search a forum or thread throughout the discussion board. Instructors often award participation points based on a required number of posts. You can use the Search feature to search for posts based on author's name, for instance, and search your name to see how many posts you have made. Search includes a keyword field, date restrictions, and options for where to search. Once you have entered your search criteria, use your mouse to click the Go button to view the results. We hope that this video has been informative, and helpful to you as a student of Maysville Community and Technical College.