TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Discussion Board Overview
• Create a Discussion Forum
  • Optional Settings
    • Forum Availability
    • Viewing Threads/Replies
    • Grade
    • Subscribe
    • Create and Edit
    • Additional Options
• Create a Discussion Thread
• Reply to Discussion Threads
• Manage Discussions
• Search and Collect Discussions

Discussion Board Overview

The Discussion Board serves to replace or augment classroom discussions in a digital format. Discussions can serve as an online meeting place, a medium for collaboration, or a way to demonstrate the understanding or application of course material. A Discussion Board forum is an area where participants discuss a topic. Within each forum are threads (or discussion topics), which contains each participant's post and replies to the post.  For more information, watch the Use Discussions video.

Create a Discussion Forum

The Discussion Board Forum serves as a virtual space for your class discussion. Each Forum is a unique topic, or discussion prompt. Within the forum, each participant will create threads, which represent a new point in the conversation.

To create a discussion forum in your course click on Discussion Board in the course menu. If you do not have a link to the Discussion Board, see Adding a Tool Link for instructions.

This will bring you to the Discussion Board. At the top of the page click Create Forum. 

Enter a Name for your discussion. Enter your discussion prompt and instructions for the Description using the text/content editor. For more information on using the Text/Content editor, see Using the myLesley Text/Content Editor.

Once you have finished, click Submit at the bottom of the page to save your changes.

Optional Settings

While many faculty use the default settings, there are additional options you may wish to modify. You may modify your forum settings or stick with the default settings.

Forum Availability

Select Yes to make your Forum available. You may also set date and time restrictions to make the forum after a certain date or during a certain date range. See Managing Release Dates (Setting Date/Time Restrictions) for more information.

Viewing Threads/Replies

You may choose how your students view threads and replies.

• Standard View allows your students to see all the other posts of the discussion forum prior to posting themselves.
  
• Participants must create a thread in order to view other threads in this forum requires students to create a thread before being able to view others posts in the discussion. 

Grade

This option will create a grade column in the Grade Center. You can view all of a student’s posts at once and apply a grade. You may choose to grade by entire forum discussion or by each thread. You can also add a due date (which will appear in the course calendar) and associate rubrics to the Discussion for easy grading.

Subscribe

Students and faculty can receive notifications of discussion activity. 

This feature does not subscribe course members to the forum. It provides the option for each discussion participant to subscribe if they wish by clicking Subscribe at the top of the discussion forum. 

Create and Edit

These options allow you to provide more or less control over how your students may post. It is recommended to allow students to create new threads, attach files and respond with a quote from another post. You may also wish to allow students to post anonymously or edit/delete their posts. Check Force Moderation of Posts to preview them prior to allowing other students to view and respond to them.

Additional Options

You may also choose to allow post tagging or allow members to rate posts.

Allow Post Tagging will allow you to assign keywords to posts which you and your students can then use to search discussion forums. 

Note: Students cannot tag posts.

To tag posts, check the threads that contain posts you wish to tag. Click Collect. 

Check the posts you wish to tag or click Select All to tag them all. Enter keywords for Tag Text and click 

Add. 

Allow Members to Rate Posts allows discussion participants to rate posts with one to five stars.

For more information see Create Discussion Forums.

Create a Discussion Thread

In the Discussion Board each thread serves as a different point in the conversation. Participants may create new threads for different ideas or topics within the conversation.

To create a thread, click on Discussion Board in the course menu.

This will bring you to the Discussion Board area of the course. Select a Discussion Forum to join the conversation.