The following settings might be the most useful to you and your users:
- Allow users to reply with quotes
- Subscribe: Allow members to subscribe to forum
- Grade: Grade Forum (replaces discussion grader)
Allow Users to reply with quote: if you select this option then when a user replies to a previous post they will get the option of using quotation marks to identify the previous posts' text.
Which looks like this:
Subscribe: Notification to be send by email when new posts are made to forumns or threads. User can subscribe or not if opton is selected by instructor.
Include body of post in the email: includes the body of the post as well as a link back to the discussion board.
Include link to a message: supplies only the link.
When users go to a forum they will then see this subscribe link:
and if they select it they get this:
Add to Gradecenter: adds a column to the gradebook, as well as giving you the option to go directly to a recap of the posts that were made by each student. Also assign a grade right from the discussion board. In this version of blackboard the discussion grader building block is no longer available. Most of the features of the discussion grader are now built into the discusson board and gradecenter.
Note: you can not set up a gradebook column if you allow anonymous posts.
Note: you can not allow users to create new threads if you select Grade Treads - you'll have to set these up for students to rely to.
Once you have this option set up, look for the gradebook icon in the forum view.
Click on the gradebook and see a list of students, an email link, the number of posts and a grade link.
Username column takes you to email
Lists number of posts and replies made to other's posts
The grade link gives you a recap of what the posts were and a place to assign points
Another place to view discussion posts is through the Performance Dashboard in Control Panel:
You'll see a list of the students with various information about their performance in the course. See a breakdown of the discussion posts click on the number in the Discussion Board column.
And here you see the individual forums with more information:
And if you click on the number in the Total Posts column you get a detailed view of each of the posts.
Other Forum Setting options include:
Tagging: give the option for managers to tag posts with keywords. To add a tag you need to click on the checkbox by (a) selected post(s) (or scroll to the bottom and choose select all and go) and then click on collect.
This give you a Tag field in the menu options next to "Mark Unread."
Then you choose select all or click on the checkbox in an individual post. Enter the tag and then click on go. The post tagging activates an addtional tag column that appears in student view.
Rate Posts: from 1 to 5 stars - shows individual rating and overall rating
Force Moderation: forces all posts to go through a moderator before showing up to readers and participants. The moderator will have to monitor these in a timely manner.
View Options
This is the tree view and the threads and replies can be expanded or deflated:
Navigation: new next and previous posts and thread buttons eliminates the need to click on the back button.
Allows for adative release rules and other availability rules such as Date set on any tool links to the discsson board - set up through performance dashboard
Updated Search functionality - search current forum, all forums, current thread, current discussion board (?)
Save as draft: Students can save posts as drafts and save them until the post is ready for publising. The process is using similar buttons as when you are saving an assignment.
Looks like:
