Cape Fear Community College

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Discussion Board

Create Forum

Discussion boards have been used in education for a long time. They continue to be a great tool for student communication and can be used for personal introductions, responding to topics, debates, role plays, presentions and for social interaction. A discussion board is divided into main topics called forums. Each of these forums can include a number of threads. Each thread might include several replies. When students create a thread or reply to a thread, this is known as a post.

It is up to the instructor how they will set up their forums. The instructions below show you how to set up a Blackboard discussion forum:

  1. Click on the Course Tools link in the Control Panel.
  2. From the dropdown menu,select Discussion Board.
  3. Click on the class-wide Discussion Board for your course.
    link to course level discussion board
  4. Click on the Create Forum button.
    create discussion forum
  5. Enter a Name and Description of the forum.
    text area for name and text editor box for description of forum
  6. Select forum availability.
    forum availability settings
  7. Select the desired forum settings.
    • Allow Anonymous Posts: Students will have the option of posting replies or messages anonymously. This is not often used, especially for graded forums, since you cannot tell who made the post.
    • Allow Author to Delete Own Posts: Students will be able to remove previously posted messages.
    • Allow Author to Edit Own Published Posts: Students will be able to edit their original postings.
    • Allow Post Tagging: Allow text labels or tags to be used to group similar messages together for search purposes.
      NOTE: For faster Discussion Board page loading, disable message tagging.
    • Allow Members to Create New Threads: Students may introduce a new subject to the Forum. If new threads are not allowed, students can only reply to the original thread. Allowing the creation of new threads can help keep the forum organized.
    • Allow Members to Rate Posts: Students can evaluate posts based on fixed 5 point scale.
    • Force Moderation of Posts: A designated moderator must approve all posts before they can viewed by other students. This might be beneficial when holding a discussion on controversial topics. Keep in mind, that students cannot view posts until the instructor approves them.
    • No grading in Forum: Do not use the discussion grader.
    • Grade Forum: Assign the total points possible for the entire forum. This feature allows the instructor to apply a grade directly from the forum. This will also push a grade column for the discussion forum to the Grade Center.
      forum grading options
      • Points Possible: Assign the total point possible for the entire forum.
    • Grade Threads: Enable grading of individual threads within the forum.
  8. Click the "Submit" button when you have made your selections.

Grade Forums or Threads

If you set your discussion forums or threads to be graded, you can access the grading feature directly in the discussion board.