SAO Newsgroups with Blackboard Browser Mode

• Before you post any messages from the browser interface, please turn off the Text Box Editor feature. Instructions to do this are located here
• Follow the link to NGs - browser from the course panel, which will take you to the browser newsgroup page.

  Note: SAO refers to its newsgroups as "Newsgroups (NGs)" whereas Blackboard refers to "Discussion Boards".  Sorry, it is historical!

  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.

  

• 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 "+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. In the following case we have entered the HET602 Test Messages newsgroup.
  You can view posts via "List View" (see button at top right). Click on this button to see something like:

  

  e.g. By looking at the number of total posts in each thread you can then see if a thread has multiple posts and if so you are able to see every post in the thread 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:

  

  Any thread that has multiple posts in it will be indicated by a plus sign in a box next to the thread name. By clicking on the thread you can expand the thread and see all posts in this thread.

For a tutorial that will describe the functionality of Version 8 browser newsgroups more fully please watch the tutorial listed below

New for Semester 2, 2008 - Blackboard version 8

Starting in Semester 2 of 2008 Blackboard has been upgraded to run under a new version, version 8.

• For a tutorial on how to use and navigate Newsgroups (NGs) via browser mode [Note: Blackboard calls newsgroups Discussion Boards] Click here