Blackboard Discussion Boards

The Discussion Board is a communication medium for posting and responding to messages. Conversations are grouped as threads that contain a main posting and all related replies. An advantage of the Discussion Board is that threads are logged and organised.

Discussion boards are an asynchronous communication tool in Blackboard that is similar to a group email. This article provides an introduction to how discussion boards work.

Discussion Boards are made up of individual threads (or 'forums') that can be organised around a particular subject. Create boards to organise discussions around themes or topics.

Main topics in a discussion forum are called threads. A thread begins a discussion point and eventually contains a list of connected posts called replies.

You may see two reply buttons when reading messages in a forum, Reply and Quote. If Quote is available, you may find it more useful since the message to which you are replying is embedded within your text entry area, just like in standard e-mail. The availability of Quote is determined by the instructor.

If you do not want someone to participate (post messages) in a general site or group discussion forum, you can assign that person the role of Reader (can see posts and follow discussions but cannot post) or Blocked (cannot post or view messages). You may want to Block a user who has a past history of inappropriate posts.