Course Tools

Discussion Board

A discussion board is the online equivalent to a bulletin board. Messages are posted to the board and everyone in the course is able to read messages and reply to them.

Like a bulletin board, only one copy of the message exists, so removing the message will remove it from the course entirely. Because of this, only the course designer may delete messages.

Make sure the tool is available to students in your course!

An advantage of the Discussion Board is that conversations are logged and organized. Conversations are grouped in threads that contain a main posting and all related replies.

There is a hierarchy within the Discussion Boards tool that is important to understand:

• Forums are like folders used to contain a large number of conversations along a similar topic. Here’s an example: you can have a ‘Course Materials’ forum used to discuss topics related to the course of study, and a ‘Course Info’ forum for addressing administrative issues in the course (like test dates, etc.).

• Threads are created inside a forum. They basically contain all messages along a particular topic… For example, someone could start a thread within the Course Materials forum called ‘Chapter 1 question’ where the first message describes a question the student has regarding Chapter 1. All replies to that message will be contained within the same thread. Think of a thread as a container for related messages.

• Messages are arranged in threads. A thread begins with an initial message and is made up of that message and all replies to that message.