Adding a Link to Discussion Board in a Content Area

You can incorporate the Discussion Board into course areas, allowing students to access the tool alongside content. For example, you can add links to the Discussion Board itself, or to specific discussion forums, to any Content Area, Learning Module, Lesson Plan, or Folder.

In a Content Area, you can add a forum link following lecture notes to gather questions on the material presented, or after an assignment to gather students’ perceptions on how they did. You can add Adaptive Release rules or date availability restrictions to limit students’ access. This allows them to access content in a specified order, such as reading a PDF before adding posts to the Discussion Board.

Step-by-Step Instructions

IMPORTANT: When a link to a forum in any course area is hidden from students, the forum itself will not be visible to students.

1. Access the Content Area, Learning Module, Lesson Plan, or Folder where you want to link to the Discussion Board or forum. To make changes to any areas of your Blackboard, ensure that Edit Mode in the upper right-hand corner of the screen is set to ON.

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2. On the action bar, hover over Tools, and select Discussion Board from the menu.

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3. On the Create Link: Discussion Board page, select the Link to Discussion Board Page option to link to the Discussion Board itself.

OR

Select the Select a Discussion Board Forum option, and choose a forum from the list.

OR

Click Create New Forum to add a link to a forum you create at this time. You select all forum settings at the time of creation. The newly created forum appears in the list of forums to choose from when adding the link in your course.

4. Click Next.

5. On the next Create Link: Discussion Board page, type a Link Name. The Link Name cannot exceed 50 characters. Students will click the link name to access the Discussion Board or forum.

6. Optionally, type instructions or a description in the text box. You can use the content editor functions to format the text and include files, images, web links, media, and Mashups. Files uploaded from your computer are saved in Course Files or the Content Collection in the top-level folder.

7. For the Available option, select Yes to make the link available to users.

8. For the Track Number of Views option, select Yes or No. If you enable tracking, the number of times the link is viewed, when it is viewed, and by whom is recorded.

9. For Date Restrictions, you can set the link to display on a specific date and time and to stop displaying on a specific date and time. Select the Display After and Display Until checkboxes to enable the date and time selections. Type dates and times in the boxes or use the pop-up Date Selection Calendar and Time Selection Menu to select dates and times. Display restrictions do not affect the availability of the Discussion Board or forum content, but only the time frame during which it appears.

10. Click Submit.

Here is a student’s view of a forum link in a content area that has been created by an instructor: