Online Discussion Tips
The Discussion Forum that hosts our Science Forum, Teaching Forum, and other online forums includes features that are designed to limit the feeling of information overload we get when we're confronted by a list of hundreds of messages. Unfortunately, some of these "features" can be misleading. The screen shot below gives a typical view of what you might see when you enter a discussion area.
Note the "Click Here for Archives" link. If this is a new discussion, there won't be an archive of past messages. But if the discussion has been going on for several weeks, the instructors may have decided to unclutter the page by archiving past messages. If you want to read those past messages, just click through to the archives. Please note that this archive link shows up only in the top page of the discussion.
Another useful feature is the "Sort By" drop-down box. If you click on the arrow to the right of that box, you are given the option of sorting by default, author, date, or subject (the default setting "nests" the messages according to "thread" -- subject and response). You may find the "Sort By" feature useful if you know who wrote something but can't find the exact message, if you want to see all responses to a particular topic thread, or if you know approximately when the message you want to read was written.
"View All Messages" and "View Unread Messages" are features that are a bit tricky. If "View All Messages" is on your screen, you see only messages that you haven't read yet because you are seeing the discussion in "read only unread messages" mode. It's easy to overlook what mode you are in and mistakenly think there are no messages (or that messages somehow dissapeared!). Actually, you have lots of messages--it's just that you've already read them! If you click on the arrow next to "View All Messages," you will see all of your previously read messages:
Note the "Expand All [+]" and "Collapse All [-]" options in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. When you see a plus sign (+) to the left of a message thread, it means there are more responses on the message board but they aren't being displayed on your screen. Click on the + and you will see links to the hidden responses. In the screen shot above, we've opened up each set of responses so that all levels are in view. Conversely, whenever there is a minus sign (-) to the left of a message, it means there are several responses and all of them are currently on display.
Feel free to experiment with the "Show Options" tab. If you click on it, you will be given lots of choices. The features in this set that we find most useful are "Select All" and "Collect."
If you click on "Select All" and then on "Collect," you can gather all the messages in that discussion, then print them out for offline reading. If you don't want all the messages, select only the ones you want by clicking in the boxes to the left of those messages.
Those are all the tips for now!
Please let us know if you have other tips for using the Discussion Board to its best advantage.