Discussions
offer you a way to communicate - and work with - your classmates
in online courses. The Discussions are
actually the best place for you to work together, to share
information and documents, and to participate in discussions.
Discussion Forums are also known as Bulletin Boards.
Unlike "chat rooms,"
Discussions let you participate without having to be online
at the same time. While brief chat sessions can be an effective
way to quickly assign responsibilities at the beginning
of a project, or brainstorm a quick solution to a dilemma
that is holding up group process, Discussions offers the
best venue for actually carrying out the work.
The "thread" feature
in computer conferencing helps you follow multiple ongoing
discussions, and gives you a permanent record of your work
together. Attachments let you share files with your group
members, helping you to monitor the progress of your group
work. While you can attach files to email messages, the
private nature of email can make it more difficult to organize
group work. Computer conferences keep your discussions and
attachments conveniently organized in one place.
Discussions also allow your
instructor to participate in discussions, monitor your groupwork,
and offer feedback. Your instructor cannot do this if you
are privately emailing each other. Use email messages for
intentionally private communication.
Discussion
rooms are split into the different topics to help keep the
questions you have related to each topic. . Clicking on
one of subtopics will take you into the discussion room
about that subject.
Add Message To This Topic
Allows you to add a new message to the Discussions area.
Topic - where you would write an outline of the subject
of conversation. Message - some text that you want transmitted.
Attach File
Allows you to attach a file with your message. Submit -
puts your comment/question/answer or anything you want to
discuss into the Discussions room.
Displaying
Messages
There is a scroll bar at the top of the page that lets you
decide how you want messages to appear.
Expand All Threads:
This lets you see all messages sorted by threads
(conversations).
Show All Messages:
This lists all messages regardless of threads.
Show All Messages
- Sorted By Title: This groups messages by title
of message.
Show All Messages
- Sorted by Author: This groups messages by author.
Show All Messages - Sorted
by Unread: This groups all unread messages.
View Flagged: Shows
all flagged messages.
Searching Messages
To begin a search, click on the Show Search button
on the top of the page. You may put a word or string of
words in the search box at the top of the page and click
on Search to find messages in that Discussions room
that have that word or string of words. This is a Normal
Search.
Clicking on Advanced Search
allows you to do a search on a word or string of words in
a conference. It also lets you choose if you wish to search
just the subject lines or both subject lines and bodies
of messages, and it lets you set date parameters for your
search.
Flagging Messages This allows you to indicate messages of importance.
Click on the message title and then choose the Flag button
in the lower half of the screen. A red flag appears when
the screen is refreshed.
To remove a flag from a single
message, click on Remove Flag after selecting the
message. To remove all flags within the conference
topic, click on the Remove All Flags button on the
top of the page.
Printing Messages Printing messages is a great way of keeping a permanent
record of the discussions. View the messages you would like
printed by searching, flagging, sorting, etc. If you would
like to print the messages viewed on your screen, click
on the View Printable button on the top of the page.
