What is the Blackboard Learn discussion board?

Using Discussion Board in Blackboard is one of the easiest ways to begin fostering on-line collaboration. This tool will help 'engage' students and foster a community within your individual class. Discussion Board can be a very valuable component to a face-to-face course, especially on a commuter campus like UIC. These Discussion Forums provide a venue for 'asynchronous communication'. They provide a public forum and are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; they make 'anywhere/anytime' learning a possibility. Forums can be set up on a topic by topic basis and customized with a host of different participation options.

Discussion forums allow you to:

• Clarify points that may not have been understood in class
• Allow students to learn from each other by leveraging the intellectual capital of your entire class
• Assist shy students by providing them with an alternate venue to participate in
• Improve a student's written communication skills
• Deal with monotonous questions in an alternate forum so you don't waste valuable class time