Blackboard Discussions
Managing Discussions

Overview

Once you have created a forum, set the due dates, and linked to a content area, there are a few additional tasks you may need to complete as you manage the forum. These tasks include changing the location of the forum on the discussion board page, navigating threads and messages, searching for particular messages, and compiling threads and messages. As you perform these tasks, it is very important to be aware of whether you are working at the thread or message level.

Points to Remember

• Move the current forum to the top of the Discussion Board so that students can find it easily.
• If you want to review posts after reading them, you should flag them or mark them as unread.
• Collect a thread or all threads in a forum to view them all at once or to print them.
• Use Search options to find posts by object, date, or author.
• Use Display options to filter messages by status.
• In addition to the tasks demonstrated in the video, you click on any column heading to sort threads by that column. By default, threads are sorted by date.

Continue to next page for tutorial and instructions.

Video Tutorial

The video on this page will demonstrate how to manage a discussion forum. Step-by-step instructions are available as a handout in the sidebar. Save and print the handout for future reference.

Continue to next page for summary and self-test.

 Summary and Self-test

Managing discussions will require that you check the discussions board frequently to monitor and respond to student activity. Being able to navigate threads and messages, mark for review, reply, search, and compile messages are skills that you will use almost daily in a fully online course.

Use the self test below to check your learning on this topic. You should take the quiz until you get all answers right.