Cerritos College

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Discussion Boards

• The Discussion Board allows you to publicly communicate with your fellow site participants via forums and privately through the built-in private messaging. To access the Discussion Board tool click the Discussion Board link on the Tool Menu.
• The lower section of the Discussion Board displays the discussion categories.
• In these categories are the discussion boards. By default the discussion titles are Questions, Class Discussions, and Student Lounge however these and the category titles are dependant upon your instructor’s preferences.
• Before the title of each discussion is an icon denoting if there are new messages (posts that you have not read). Also displayed for each discussion is the number of topics and the number of messages, and when and who posted the last message to the discussion board.
• Click the discussion title to view the board’s topics, click the topic title to view posts.
• By default posts are listed from oldest to newest.
• Every post contains the following information: date posted, the posters name, when that person joined the course and the total number of messages the person has posted.
• You may view a poster’s profile by clicking the profile button.
• To send a person a private message click the pm button.
• You may quote a person’s original message in your own post by pressing the quote button. You may also rate a post by choosing a rating from 1 to 5 from the drop-down.
• To reply to a discussion post, click the Post Reply button at the top or bottom of the page.
• Enter your message in the text area.
• You may format your message using the buttons above the text area. You can also add emoticons (smilies) to your message using the icons to the left. When you format your message or add smilies you will see code added to your message but will not see the results until you submit.
• Normally you will want to leave the options below the text area as is however you do have the choice of disabling HTML, BB code, smilies, appending your signature, or to be notified when a reply to your post is made.
• You may also attach files to your post using the Attach Files button. Once you press the Attach Files button the page will display an additional panel. Press the Browse button to attach a file. After browsing and adding your file you may enter an optional description of the attached file as well as choosing to add more attachments.
• Once finished press the submit button.
• Your message will appear at the bottom of the discussion board. Notice that since you are the poster you are able to edit your post by clicking the Edit button.
• To easily access discussions you frequently visit you may bookmark it, to do this click the Bookmark it! link at the top of the discussion.
• Enter any pertinent information for the bookmark, click the Update button, then click OK when you receive the message that the bookmark was saved.
• To access your Bookmarks click the My Bookmarks link at the top of the page.
• You may search for a specific post by clicking the Search icon.
• Enter a term to search for and press the Search button. Note that you may also choose to search for all terms or any terms as well as which forums and categories to search and how to order the results.
• You will then see any results found and you may click the Forum Name to view.
• Private messaging is a very useful feature that allows you to communicate with a single person. If someone has sent you a private message you will see a number in parenthesis after the New Private Messages link, this number indicates the number of messages waiting for you.
• To access your private messages click the New Private Messages link then click the message.
• After reading the message you post a reply by clicking the Post Reply button. To delete a message click the Delete this message button.
• You may also send a new private message by clicking the New Topic button.
• Enter the user’s name in the To User text box. If you are uncertain of the user name click the find user button and enter part of the user’s name, click Search, select the correct user from the dropdown, and click the Choose the user button.
• Enter the subject, the message, and press the submit button.
• Once you have finished reading the posts for all boards you should mark them as read by clicking the Mark All As Read. This will allow you to easily see which boards have new activity the next time you visit.

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