How do students participate in a Discussion, Blog, or Journal?

Topics in this Article

Overview
Student View Tab
Access Topics
Post Messages
Reply to Messages

Overview

Three types of topics are available through the discussion tool:

Threaded Discussions
Collaborative Blogs
Private Journals

A threaded discussion provides asynchronous conversation (not occurring simultaneously) through posted messages and responses. The term "threaded" indicates a message is displayed with all of its related replies. In online instruction, a threaded discussion gives you the opportunity to have a discussion with your instructor and the other students in the class electronically. Communicating online requires that you be more patient than you would be face-to-face because you will not get immediate feedback. The lack of facial expressions makes it more difficult to interpret the information correctly. However, an advantage to online communication is that you have an opportunity to think about what you want to say before posting it. Your instructor may require peer reviews of postings. Submit a peer review for a post by clicking on the Review this Message button.

A collaborative blog allows the students in a class to post a chronological series of entries on a particular topic. Students may also add comments to any of the blog entries. This enables participants to collaboratively create an informational piece about a topic. You may login at any time, day or night, to contribute to the blog's content.

A private journal gives each student a place to write and reflect. Journals are typically kept private between the student and the instructor, but can also be setup to be shared with the class.

Session Timeout

WARNING: Blackboard sessions timeout after 30 minutes of inactivity. Web Browsers DO NOT register typing as activity. If you're typing an assignment, assessment, or discussion submission for longer than 30 minutes, the session may timeout when the submit button is pressed. This means that you may lose your work.

TIP: To prevent lost work, create your content in a word processor,
and then copy & paste the content into Blackboard.

Student View Tab
Preview your course as a Student

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The Student View tab allows you to see and interact with Blackboard exactly as your students do. Blackboard provides each course with a Demo Student Account for testing. This demo account is used when you take quizzes and submit assignments while in the Student View tab. In the student view, you are able to see exactly what your students see including the My Grades area. Use the Student View tab whenever you have a question about how your students will view and work in your Blackboard course.

To preview a Web Page as the students will see it, click on the Student View tab.

Access Topics & Read Posts

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Click on Discussions from the course menu on the left. Click on the name of the Topic that you want to read and/or post to.
NOTE: If you do not see the topic or posting you are looking for, it may be displayed on the next page. At the bottom of the window, you will find Next Page and Previous Page icons you can use to navigate through the list of topics and discussion postings.	Can't find what you're looking for? There are several possibilities: Perhaps it has not been released yet by the instructor? Is it on the next page? Permanently increase the default number of items displayed per screen by modifying your global Bb's Paging Preference.

A discussion thread refers to a message and all of the replies directly relating to that message.
- These threads can be expanded by clicking on the corresponding button.
- All the messages in that thread will be listed.
  Re: indicates a reply to a previous response.
After clicking on a topic, you see a screen showing the messages that have been posted to that topic. Click on All to see all of the messages in that topic or Unread to see the unread messages only.
Click on the button next to a message to expand it and show all of its replies.

Click on the title of a message to open it up for reading.

After reading the message you selected, you have the option of continuing to read the thread by clicking on Next Message or by asking to Display the Complete Thread and see all of the posts at once for that thread. You may also return to the Topic main area by selecting Close this window.

Reading a Post in Blackboard

Post Messages

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Click on Create Message

Enter the message of your post and add any necessary attachments. See File Upload for information on how to upload attachments. Avoid using special characters ( @ # % & ; ).