When you enter the Blackboard Discussion Board, your instructor will have created discussion forums. You will usually have two options:

1. Start a "New Thread" and then type your answer to an assignment question or state your opinion on a topic.
2. You may be asked to respond to discussion threads that your instructor has already posted and then respond to other students' responses.

When you enter the discussion forum, you will see a message or topic title followed by the name of the person who created the thread or responded to a discussion thread. In the example below, the "Film Instructor" asked the students to respond only to the topics that he posted and then to other students' replies in the same discussion thread.

1. To make sure that you see the discussion thread posted by the instructor before you see the student responses, click the "collapse all" button. When you click the "collapse all" icon, you will see only the discussion threads begun by "Film Instructor":

   

2. If you then click the "Show Options" button, the "check box" appears so that you can select the discussion thread comments you want to read first:

   

3. If you click the "+" sign in front of the first discussion thread, you will also be able to see who responded to the first topic created by the "Film Instructor":

   

4. Notice above that seven different class members have responded to Film Instructor's discussion thread titled "Preferences." You will also notice that two responses also contain discussion threads, indicated by the "+" sign. If you then click the plus sign in front of the first response posted by "Jennifer Jones," you will expand that discussion thread to see who responded to Jennifer:

   

   Notice that Jennifer responded to "Film Instructor." Then Linda responded to Jennifer's response. They continued their discussion, which is what the "Film Instructor" hopes will happen throughout all the discussion forums in the HUM 160 course.

5. If you click the select box in front of each response, you can then click the "Collect" button to read all the responses in that discussion thread: