SAO Newsgroups with Blackboard Browser Mode

• To see the Flash animation of how to use the Blackboard browser mode, click here
  

• Before you post any messages from the browser interface, please turn off the Text Editor feature (so that students using a news reader can easily read your postings). Instructions to do this are located here
• Follow the link to NGs - browser from your Blacboard unit menu, which will take you to the browser newsgroup page.

  Note: SAO refers to its newsgroups as "Newsgroups (NGs)" whereas Blackboard refers to "Discussion Boards". 

  Here you'll see the full list of newsgroups (Blackboards calls individual newsgroups "Forums") for your unit. These will be something like HET6XX Test Messages, HET6XX Introductions, HET6XX Weeks 01 and 02, etc) and so on down the page. Be careful if your unit has A and B streams. Follow the link to the newsgroup you wish to access, e.g. HET607 Test Messages:

  

• Once you have entered a newsgroup (by clicking on the bold text of the newsgroup name), you can either:
  1. Submit a new post (a message) and begin a new "thread" (via the "Create Thread" button) , or
  2. Reply to a thread (one or more existing posts) with a post (click on the Thread link, and select the "Reply" button of the post you wish to reply to), or
  3. View posts and threads - you can expand or contract threads (view the tutorial below to see these functions) to see the contained posts
• Note there are two main ways of displaying posts in each newsgroup - List View and Tree View.
  • You can view posts via "List View" (see button at top right). Click on this button to see something like the following:

    

    List view allows you to see the total number of posts in each thread, and also lets you see how many posts are unread by you. You can see each thread with multiple posts by clicking on the thread name.

  • You can also view posts via "Tree View" (see button at top right). Click on this button to see something like the following:

    

    Any thread that has multiple posts will be indicated by a "plus" symbol in a box next to the thread name. By clicking on the thread you can expand the thread (the first post symbol will then change to a "minus" sign) and see all posts in this thread.

    

• To reply to a post you have read, simply click on "Reply":

  

  Then compose your response and click "Submit":

  

  And you will get a "Success" message (top of screen) letting you know that your post was created and you will also be able to see your new post in the thread listing:

  

For more information about the functionality of the Blackboard 9.1 newsgroup brower mode, please watch the follwing tutorial (noting that Blackboard call newsgroups "Discussion Boards"):

• Creating a Discussion Board Post
• Creating a New Discussion Board Thread
• Replying to a Discussion Board Thread
• Organizing Discussion Board Posts