What is Discussion Forum and Threaded Discussion?

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A Discussion Forum gives you an opportunity to participate in virtual conversations at any time and any location. 'Threaded discussion refers to online discussion postings about a topic. In an online course, you professor may have weekly discussion assignments. Each week, there are questions for students to answer. Students are asked to post their answer on the Discussion Forum assigned to the week. Students can read the messages and respond to them. This group of messages with the initial message and responses is called a 'thread'.

Here is an example of Threaded Discussion. In List View, for a message thread, you see the number of posts and number of unread posts. In Tree View, you see a + sign next to a message thread. In either Tree View or List View, when you click on the Subject line of a thread, you see the initial message and the responses with subject, author, and date.

A message posted on the Discussion Board can be viewed by all students enrolled in your course and your professor. If you would like to write a private message to your professor or to a student, use the Mail or Message tool.

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