Perform the following steps to create a Discussion Board Forum:

1. Login into Blackboard (If you don't have an instructor login for Blackboard, check with your Blackboard system administrator.)
2. Click the Discussion Board button in the Navigation bar on the left of your Blackboard classroom.
3. Click the Add Forum button at the top. The Add Forum form appears, with Title and Description text boxes.
4. In the Title text box, type in the title of your Forum (e.g., Week 1: Assignment 1 - Developing Online Discussions).
5. In the Description text box, type the information for the assignment (e.g., Please post Assignment One - The Starbucks Case to this Forum by Day 4 - Sunday. Respond to at least two other postings by Day 6 - Tuesday). You can format your Forum description using the built-in Blackboard 6.1 editor, which allows you to easily format your description. It works much like Microsoft Word. For example, you can use the familiar toolbar buttons in this editor to change the font size and color, align, indent, italicize, bold, underline, along with the ability to add tables, number steps, and bulleted items. In addition, you can highlight text and link it to a Web site using the Hyperlink button. You can also spell check your description by clicking the ABC button. For for additional details on using this built-in editor, click the help ? icon.
6. Specify your desired settings for the Forum by marking or unmarking the appropriate check boxes. The default settings allow anonymous posts, file attachments, and new thread creation. You can also let students edit their own messages and remove their messages from the Forum. Typically, you'll want to prevent anonymous posts, unless you are discussing a topic of a sensitive nature. (Note: The author of anonymous posts can still be identified by an instructor or a teaching assistant, but will appear anonymous to students in the Discussion Board.) In addition, you usually want to grant students the ability to modify and remove their own postings. Another good practice is to allow students to create threads because it builds a hierarchical structure in the Forum that makes distinguishing discussion branches easier and faster. However, you may want to prevent file attachments (or at least ask students to keep file sizes to a minimum) because of storage quotas for your Blackboard server and the potential for viruses.
7. When you finish specifying your custom Forum settings, click the Submit button. (Tip: You can reorganize the order of forums by changing the number preceding them. It is a good idea to move each new week's Forums to the top, so that students don't have to continually scroll down further as the course proceeds.)
8. You can use the Modify and Remove buttons to edit and delete forums, respectively.
9. To see how students will view your Forum, click the OK button. (Note: When you create more Forums in the Discussion Board, you will need to scroll down to see a new one.)