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.
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 or TA cannot do this if
you are privately emailing each other. Save 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. By clicking on the + sign you can go into even more sections within each
topic. Clicking on the - sign will close the subtopic list. 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.
