The Discussion Board in Blackboard includes a number of handy features for working with discussion threads and grading posts. The controls in the upper right corner of a Discussion Board Forum let you Expand All or Collapse All threads at once (Tip: Collapsing a thread reveals the first level posts, which are usually the initial responses to your assignment). Clicking the Search icon opens a form that lets you locate a message in a thread by author or keywords (--you can even limit the search to specific subject headings). To display only the messages you haven't read yet in the Discussion Board, click the View Unread Messages icon in the upper left corner of the form. To see all messages once again, simply click the View All Messages icon.

The Discussion Boards includes a set of options that help you work with threads and posts. To display these options, click the Show Options tab in the right corner of a Discussion Boards Forum. The Contents window will change to display a row of icons just above the discussion threads. The following table lists and describes how to use these options:

	Select All	Marks the check boxes in front of all the messages in the forum.
	Unselect	Clears the check boxes in front of all the messages in the forum.
	Invert	Clears marked message text boxes or selects unmarked text boxes.
	Read	All marked messages dim, indicating they have been read.
	Unread	All marked messages are highlighted, indicating they are unread.
	Collect	The contents of all marked messages are displayed in the Contents window simultaneously. Note: This allows you to print all the messages using your Web browser.
	Lock	Only an instructor or Forum administrator can lock a thread or message. Locking a thread or message prevents students from replying to it. (They can still read the messages, however).
	Unlock	Only an instructor or Forum administrator can unlock a locked thread or message.
	Remove	Only an instructor or Forum administrator has the right to remove a student's message.

At the bottom of each discussion Forum, you will find a Sort By list box. This list box contains four options, Default, Author, Date, and Subject. When grading student posts, click the Sort By list box and then click the Author option. This will rearrange all the posts in the Forum, so that they are displayed in ascending alphabetical order by student name. Each student's assignment post and replies will be group together for easy and fast grading. (Tip: You can open a second Blackboard browser window and display the course Gradebook. This lets you switch between the Discussion Board and Gradebook, making it easier and faster to assess and enter student grades.)

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