It’s no newsflash that Discussion Boards can be a powerful addition to e-Learning. Class conversation is no longer limited to a few hours a week, students can work together to build the course’s body of knowledge, and instructors can more precisely measure student participation. However, instructors are often hesitant to add another task to their course management responsibilities.

Application Pack 1 for the Blackboard Learning System™ – Enterprise License contains powerful new Discussion Board features that offer tremendous improvements in instructor efficiency and provide new opportunities for student-first learning as well.

First, Discussion Boards can now be released selectively. A faculty member can pre-populate the introduction to each of the weekly discussion prompts, for example, and determine the release schedule. Each week, the appropriate discussion appears for the appropriate group. One less course management task to worry about!

Monitoring Discussion Board participation at a high level is also easier than ever, thanks to the inclusion of a "Discussion Board Posts" column in the popular Performance Dashboard tool. At a glance, instructors can see a list of students and how many postings they have made – a single click provides more detailed statistics.

With the advent of Forum Moderation, instructors can designate a proxy – perhaps a TA, student leader, or department assistant – to review and accept postings. Different forums can have different moderators, allowing the instructor to encourage the creation of an active, vibrant community, while providing students with leadership opportunities.
 
Peer review and feedback can also be encouraged by leveraging the new Post Rating function. If allowed, students can use a five-star ranking system to judge the quality of a particular post. The benefits are at least twofold: replies are more substantive when students have an alternative outlet to simply agree or disagree, and they are more likely to access the tool to see how their peers are judging their own posts. Threads in a Discussion Board can also now be directly connected to the Gradebook, eliminating workarounds for faculty who like to include student collaboration in their assessment of a student’s work.

Application Pack 1 was released in April 2006, so we are only now seeing the impact of these new Discussion Board features among clients. As Eric Kunnen, Coordinator of Instructional Technologies at Grand Rapids Community College, says, "We are extremely excited by the teaching and learning potential of the new discussion board in Blackboard 7.1. From basic, yet frequently requested enhancements such as setting the availability of forums to more advanced user features including built-in forum and thread level grading, the new discussion board brings new capabilities to faculty.

Eric continues, "In addition, community and organization site leaders and looking forward to the ability to keep the lines of communication open using the new subscription feature. With a small amount of orientation, new users can begin to leverage the new discussion board features quickly and easily."