How do I add a discussion forum?

The discussion tool is the primary way for you and your students to interact asynchronously in a course. Every Blackboard course has a discussion board that contains a collection of forums. You and your students can post “threads” to a forum, which others can then add replies.

In the following steps, we actually start by creating a LINK to a discussion forum then create the actual forum in the process.

1. Go to a content folder in your course.
2. Click the Tools button to open its dropdown menu.
3. Select the Discussion Board option. The “Create Link: Discussion Board” page will open.
4. Click the Create New Forum button. The “Create Forum” page will open.
5. Enter a name for your forum in the “Name” text field.
6. Enter instructions for your forum in the”Description” textbox. You may want to highlight and copy this text to the clipboard for use in Step 12 (Ctrl+C on Windows; Cmd+C on Mac).
7. Click Grade Discussion Forum in the “Forum Settings” section if you intend to grade participation in this forum, then enter a number in the “Points Possible” textbox.
8. Change any of the other default settings in the “Forum Settings” section if you’d like.
9. Click the Submit button at the bottom-right side of the page. You’ll return to the “Create Link: Discussion Board” page, which will display your new discussion forum in the “Select a Discussion Board Forum” list box.
10. Click the name of the new forum you created.
11. Click the Next button at the bottom-right side of the page. The “Create Link: Discussion Board” page will change.
12. Type a description in the text box labeled the same. You might want to now paste the same text you used for the forum’s description in Step 6.
13. Click the Submit button.