A discussion board enables tutors to facilitate multi-threaded “conversations” to evolve over a protracted period. They are simple to deploy and manage, and if planned carefully can promote very insightful and deeper learning outcomes. Forums can be assessed, and deployed by groups, and even peer lead. Combine discussion threads with other active tools (e.g. wikis) to ensure meaningful interactions are promoted and facilitated effectively. A student lead discussion forum can provide a simple way to enable peer discussions and support around a specific topic.
Each course typically has a single discussion board, which in turn can contain any number of forums, and again each forum can contain any number of threads. Using specific forums and threads helps to keep discussions focussed and should prevent “off topic” conversations.
Info Please note that if you wish to create a forum that is restricted to a selected group of people you have to use the discussion board tool within the Groups feature.