Communications

Announcements

There are several places that you can access Announcements. Announcements can come from your instructor or from Blackboard Administrators (such as when Blackboard is going to be unavailable).

From the My Blackboard Tab, you can view announcements in the My Announcement box.

You can also access announcements from individual classes by clicking on the Announcement link in the Tools box:

Using the drop down box, select which course(s) for which you wish to view the announcements

You can also view Announcements from each individual class.

Click on the class link. The class opens to the Announcement page.

If your instructor has the course opening to a different page, you can still access the Announcements through the Course Menu on the left side of the page.

Click the link to go directly to the Announcement page.

You can also access the Announcements through the link.

Click on "Announcements" to be taken to the Announcement page.

NOTE: Your instructor may have some of these options hidden.

Email

 Blackboard offers students and instructors an email function that allows you to send email messages to other students and instructors. This is different from the Discussion Board option because email message goes directly to the person in the To field and no one but the intended recipient sees it.  This feature is also different from the "messages"  section as to there is no record of the sent emails or the received emails.  If you would like to have records of your communication with others in the class we encourage you to use the "messages" section.
 

Follow the directions below to send an email message:

1. Click on the Communication button to display the Communications page, pictured below.

2. Click on the Send Email link to display the Communications mail page, pictured below.

3 .Click on the link corresponding to the intended recipient to display the Message Details page, pictured below. This example uses All Instructors as the intended recipient.

4. Click in the Subject field and type a subject for the message.

5. Click in the Message field and type the contents of the message.

6. Scroll down to the Set Message Options area, pictured below.

7. Click to identify if you want a copy of the message sent to you.

8. Click on the Add button if you want to add an attachment to the message.

Note: Clicking on the Add button displays the Select File screen, pictured below.

1. Click on the Browse button to open the Choose File dialog box, pictured below.
   
   

1. Locate the file you want to send.
2. Click on the Open button to select the file and return to the Select File page.
3. Click on the Submit button to add the attachment to the message and return to the original message page.

9. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

10. Click on the Submit button to send the message.

Discussion Board

Blackboard provides a discussion board as a tool to use in the virtual classroom setting. The discussion board is asynchronous, so everyone does not have to be available at the same time to have a conversation.

An additional advantage of the discussion board is that student conversations are logged and organized. Conversations are grouped into threads that contain a main posting and all related replies.

Discussion Threads-Explained

 Blackboard defines a discussion thread as the ongoing student/instructor contribution to the online discussion topic. But what does that mean and how does it fit with the Discussion board?

 Let’s start from the beginning. Your instructor has created a Discussion Forum (DF for short), a place where every student can go to talk to the instructor and to one another. Your conversations inside this DF are similar to your conversations in the classroom. Your instructor may ask questions that you need to respond to (Discussion Questions) or post comments for you to read and consider.

Going a little deeper, let’s break the actual conversation apart. A thread is a piece of an online conversation that you have with your instructor or your fellow classmates. One person begins the thread by clicking on the Add New Thread button at the top of the Discussion Forum. You fill out the message form (similar to an email message) and submit your message. Your instructor and classmates will read the thread you wrote and may choose to respond. Any responses to your original thread display under your thread heading. Responses are indented slightly so that you can quickly determine the main thoughts (threads) in the classroom discussion. So, in essence, a thread is just a comment that you make in written form in the Blackboard classroom.

A threaded discussion is just that. It is an ongoing discussion, started with one thread and continuing on with several responses. You can always determine the original thread because it is listed at the top of the discussion and all of the responses have the RE: designator in front of the subject portion. These discussions can become quite lengthy and complex or be short and to the point. It depends on the topic and how much your instructor and fellow students like to write.

One important tip for effective use of the Discussion Board is that you should always start a new thread when you have a new thought that is unrelated to the previous thread. If you are responding to something in a previous thread, by all means, post your comment as a response. However, if you have a thought that is off the current topic of discussion, begin a new thread for discussion. This way, it is easier to determine that there are 5 main topics of discussion, each with their own discussion thread, rather than one long, generalized topic. It’s like the Table of Contents in a book. When you look at the DF, you can tell immediately what people are talking about because the main thoughts are laid out as threads. Otherwise you may have to read through 15 or 20 responses to find another main point.

Follow the steps below to enter the Discussion Board:

1. Click on the Discussion Board button on the toolbar to display the main Discussion Board page, pictured below.

Note: You can also access the Discussion Board from the Communications page.

2. Click in the title of the forum to open it. This forum example uses the title Introduction Question

Reading and Responding to Messages

 Once a message has been posted, it appears as a link with the subject of the message appearing as the name. You can read messages at any time.

Follow the directions below to read and respond to messages.

1. Click on the subject of the message you want to read to display the message, as pictured in the sample below.

2. Click on the Next Message button under the main text of the message to read the next message posted in response to this thread.

3. Click on the Reply button to display the Your Response screen, pictured below.

4. Click in the Message text field.

5. Type your response.

6. Click on the Preview button to preview the message before sending.

7. Click on the Submit button to submit the message to the Discussion Board.

Note: All of the students enrolled in the class will be able to read and respond to your message.

Creating a Message Thread

Anytime you have a new topic to discuss or question to ask that isn’t related to any of the previous threads on the Discussion Board, you should post a new thread. This makes the Discussion Board easier to navigate because each thread is a separate and distinct thought.

Follow the directions below to create a new thread:

1.      Click on the Add New Thread button at the top of the Discussion Board window to display the Create New Message screen, pictured below.

2. Click in the Subject field.

3.      Enter a subject (topic) for the message.

4.      Click in the Message field.

5.      Type your message.

6.      Click on the Preview button to preview the message before sending.

7.      Click on the Submit button to submit the message to the Discussion Board.

Note: All of the students enrolled in the class will be able to read and respond to your message and view your attachment.

Navigating in the Discussion Board

The discussion board contains some specific navigational tools used to navigate between messages. When moving throughout the messages and threads, be sure to use the following features:

• View Unread Messages: Allows you to switch from reading all unread messages only or all messages.
• Expand All: Opens a thread to view the topic and the associated responses.
• Collapse All: Hides all responses and displays only the main thread.
• Show Options: Brings up several quick key buttons that can be used when reading notes.

• Select All: Allows you to select all of the messages in the forum (usually for collection).
• Unselect: Unselects all of your previously selected items.
• Invert: Switches the selection mode of your items. For instance, if they were previously selected, they now become unselected.
• Read: Marks all of the selected messages as Read.
• Unread: Marks all of the selected messages as Unread.
• Collect: Collects all of the selected messages onto one page, usually for printing.

Deleting messages and threads

You do not have the ability to delete messages once they are posted. Only your instructor has this privilege. If you post something that you do not want to remain on the discussion, contact your instructor to remove it.

 Copy and Paste

 You can write messages for the discussion board in a word processor such as Microsoft Word.  This allows you to use the spell-checking features of Word before posting your message.

 Follow the directions below to copy and paste text from another application:

1. Open Microsoft Word (or another word processing program) if it is not already open.
2. Type your message
3. Spell check your message. This is not a requirement, but it is always a good idea.
4. Select all of the text of your message by:
   1. Click once at the beginning of the text
   2. Hold down the Shift key
   3. Click again at the end of the text
5. Click on Edit, Copy from the menu bar.
6. Press the Alt and Tab keys at the same time to switch to your Web browser.
7. Reply to an existing message or start a new thread.
8. Enter a subject for your message.
9. Click in the Message area.
10. Click on Edit, Paste from the menu bar of your Web browser.
11. Click on Submit button at the bottom of the page
12. Click OK on the receipt page.

Messages

 The Messages tool affords you a means within Blackboard of corresponding with students in each course while affording you the opportunity to keep a record of that correspondence.  The Email feature in Blackboard keeps NO record of your correspondence.

• Click on the  button to create a new message.  A new Compose Message screen will open.  Click on the  button to select the recipient(s) of the message.  Then compose your message as you would in most Email clients, and click  to send the message.
• If you would like to organize your messages, click on  to create individual folders for each student and your instructor in order to keep track of your correspondence.  Individual messages can be moved into individual folders from one of two places.  First, from either the Folder:Inbox or Folder: Sent screen, click on the box in front of a message, then use the  button.  From the View Message screen, simply click on the  button.  In either case, when the Move Message window opens, select the folder to which you wish to move the file. Note that the  icon will NOT be available as an option to you unless you have first created the additional individual student folders using the  icon in the opening Messages screen.
• Click on the Inbox to view all new Messages received, and click on Sent to view all sent Messages. 

Click on the linked Subject of the message to open it.  Clicking on the arrow above each column allows you to sort the contents of that folder by that field.

When you have finished reading the message, from the View Message screen, you may Reply, Reply All, Forward, Move, Remove, or Print the message.