Overview of Class Discussions

IBS 2.7 > Class Discussions 

A video tutorial is available on this topic. Select Participating in Class Discussions from the IBS Help Page, or click here to view it.

Class Discussions (also known as "forums") are an important part of the IBS experience. Class Discussions are available in all facilitated classes, and provide a way for facilitators and students to interact and share their thoughts and questions. Class Discussions are not available in independent study courses.

The class discussions are organized in a form called threaded discussions. A thread is simply a subject or a topic that is being discussed. In the IBS discussion forums, the facilitator creates a separate thread for each discussion question that is assigned. The students' replies within this thread should relate to the question or comment that was posted. Creating a separate thread for each question allows the student responses to be grouped and organized by subject. If replies were not grouped by subject (i.e. if they were not in a thread) the conversation would be very difficult to follow. It would be similar to a group of people discussing different subjects at the same time, constantly changing from subject to subject.

There are three ways to enter the class discussion (forum) environment in IBS.

1. From My Courses, click the Class Discussions link in the upper right corner. This is a quick way to get to the general forum environment, where you can see the forums for all of your facilitated classes. You may scroll or use your browser’s Find function (CTRL-F) to locate the forum for a particular class.
   
    
2. From the My Classes tab in My Courses, click the Class Discussions button in the Action column. This will take you directly to the forum for the selected class.
   
    
3. From within the classroom, click the Class Discussions link in the top panel. This will take you directly to the forum for the current class.

• Forum: a forum is a container for a group of threads
• A forum would be analogous to a classroom, in which different topics (i.e. threads) may be discussed
• Forums are created by the facilitator

• Thread: as mentioned above, a thread is a topic or a subject that is being discussed
• A thread may be created by a facilitator or student

• Reply: a reply is a message that is posted (see next item) within a thread
• Participants can reply to the original thread
• Participants can also reply to a message from another participant in the discussion

• Post: when a participant replies within a thread, his/her message is posted in the thread or forum

• Attach: to upload a file (e.g. image, PDF, Word document, spreadsheet, etc.) to the forum. The file is "attached" to a post and may then be downloaded by other users of the forum.

• Attachment: a generic term for a file (e.g. image, PDF, Word document, spreadsheet, etc.) that has been uploaded to the forum

For more information on threaded discussions and other helpful tips, please refer to the Online Student Orientation course.

Attachments:
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