Discussion Board
 

The  Discussion Board is just what the name implies. It is an opportunity to hold a discussion among the students. Rather than being face-to-face in the same classroom, this discussion is asynchronous and can go on for several days.

Questions in the Discussion Board are generally aimed at the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. The idea is not to have the students just repeat the facts of the lesson, but to apply these facts to real situations, thus putting their learning to practical application.

The Discussion Board is generally divided by weeks. The instructor posts the question(s) for the week, and the students respond to the question and to each other, thus creating a thread on a given topic.

To look at the mechanics of the Discussion Board, continue on with this page. To review the rubrics for the Discussion Board, click HERE.

The Discussion Board is housed under the Communication Tools. Clicking on the Communication Tools will bring up WebCT Mail, Discussion Board, and Chat options as shown below.

When you click the Discussions icon, you will bring up a listing of the messages that have been posted. The list at the right indicates that there are no new messages to read since that column has all zeros in it.
By clicking on a particular week, such as Week 1, you will see a listing of the messages for that week similar to the one below.

Note the green triangle in the first column. If the arrow is pointed right, the "file folder" of postings is closed. If you click on the green triangel, it will point down, and list all the messages under that topic. Notice on the image below that if you put your curser over a message, it will appear as an underlined link. Clicking on it when underlined (and your curser has become a hand) will open that message.

If you click on any of the messages, you will see a message appear on the screen. You can then read the message from your student. You will also see options for replying to the message.
Clicking on Reply will give you a format for sending your comment back to the entire class for viewing. If you select Quote, you will include the student's comments in the reply. If you wish to reply directly to the student who posted, without anyone else seeing the post, use Reply Privately. In any of these three cases, once you have typed in your reply, you will need to click on Post to send the message to the Discussion Board. Download will allow you to save the message on your computer.

One feature often missed is the ability to Compile messages. Near the bottom of the mail page you will see the following information:

In front of each message is a check box. If you check several of these boxes, and then click on the Compile command, it will place these messages into one document. You may wish to put all the answers from one student into a document to view their progress. You may wish to put all the messages on a particular topic together. This compiled list can be easily printed for future reference. The Compile feature also works in WebCT mail.