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Discussions

Discussions is a tool that allows course participants to send, read, reply to and search for messages and discuss questions posed by the instructor or other members of the course. On the Internet, and in some online courses, a Discussion may also be called a bulletin board or a conference. In WebCT, Discussions is the man tool and Topics are used to create discussion groups around particular subjects. Topics can be Public, where all course members participate in the discussion, or Private, where only specified groups of students can participate.

Discussions can be used:

As a place where students can discuss general issues
To discuss case studies or learning material with the instructor
By a group of students to discuss or present an assignment
To post general messages from the instructor
To organize related discussions

The Discussions layout is very similar to that of the e-mail window. The main difference between the Discussions tool and Mail is that when you post a message in a topic, everyone sees the posted messages – they are public not private.

In some special cases, instructors may set up a private discussion topic for a selected group of participants (e.g. members of a group project may have a private discussion).

You may select the Discussion tool by clicking on the menu link or on a Discussions icon. You will then be taken to a topic-listing window:

Click on the Topic to see the postings. If you click on All you will see all postings for all available topics.

The return to discussions link will return you to the topic listing.

To follow the discussion threads, the original posting and the replies are indicated by indentations. For Example:

This is a tread with the originator of the topic as the first posting, and each reply is listed as a series of postings underneath it. One indentation or tab means that those postings are replies to the original message. If a posting is indented once more, this posting is a response to one of the replies to the original message.

Tip: You may control the # of characters displayed for a messages’ subject (long subjects sometimes don’t allow you to see other important message information):

From the "discussions" screen, select topic settings and enter the desired # of characters of subject to be displayed. Topics may be set up for particular subjects. Use the "Select topic" dropdown menu to see the available topics of forums.

Messages can be sorted chronologically or by thread, and you can display All, Read or Unread messages by using the show options (Show all / Show unread).

Reading / Replying to Messages

To read a particular posting, or article, simply click on the main underlined subject, or the sender’s name. This will bring up the message window as shown below:

After you have read the message you can reply to it using one of:

Reply: responds directly to the message
Reply Privately: sends you response only to the person who posted the original message.
Quote: copies the original posting into your reply

Tip: Be sure to add you message to the appropriate discussion topic.

You can also jump from topic to topic, or threaded discussion, using the Next Thread and Previous Thread buttons. This will save you the time of closing the message window, and re-opening the window again and again.

Composing Messages

To post a new message, click on Compose Message. A new window will open similar to the one used in creating E-mail messages. The first thing to be sure of is that your message will be posted in the correct topic area or forum. To check/change this use the drop-down menu next to the Topic heading.

In the next line, titled Subject, enter a subject. This will be displayed in the forum as the topic for a thread or conversation. Type in your message in the message box then either:

Send you message
Preview your message
Cancel your message (this will delete what you have typed in the message box)
Attach a document or a file to your message

After you press Send the message window will close and you will return to the main Discussions area. WebCT does not dynamically update the messages, or refresh your screen; click on "Update Listing" and this will refresh you messages. Your new message posting will be displayed.

Tip: If when using Netscape and resizing a message window, text you have entered may be lost. To avoid this problem, resize the message window before entering text or use Internet Explorer.

Attaching Files

You can attach files to discussion postings in the same manner as you did with E-Mail.

Compiling Messages

Compiling messages allows you to see the content of a selected group of messages in one window that can be saved on to a disk or printed:

Choose the messages you would like to have compiled by checking the box next to the name of the person who posted the message:

Select Compile from "Apply to selected messages below" in the pull-down menu.
Click on the Go button next to Compile.
The selected messages will appear in a separate window

A browser dialogue box will appear. If you want to print out the compiled messages go to the browser File menu and choose Print.
To save the file (to a disk or hard drive), click on the Download button.
Click on the Save file, the select where on your hard drive or disk you want to save the file.
Click on the Save button.
To read the file, bring it up in a word processor (it is a text file).

Additional Note

In addition to typing your message into the box, you can copy and paste text into the compose box from a document you have written in a word processor. You can also either type in or cut and past HTML code into the compose box and it will appear as it would on a web page in the forum. If you want to place images within you discussion space, you will want to point to the URL outside of WebCT (i.e., http://www.somewhere.com/images/example.gif).

Tip: Because WebCT E-mail and Discussions have no spell-check, you can write your message in your word processor and copy/paste into message box.