blackboard
LMS
3
Discussion Board Options
As with many features in Blackboard Learn, teachers have the ability to choose from a multitude of options within the LMS's discussion board.
When creating a discussion using the default settings, students are required to create a thread in order to respond to the given prompt. This feature does not provide a single thread response for the entire class, as students must click on a peer's thread link in order to read his or her response. In this mode, teachers may promote topic-specific threads that could be easier to track and follow.
Some teachers and students found the former method to be confusing and have asked for ways to utilize a single thread for discussion boards. This may be done by unselecting the "Allow Members to Create New Threads" option under the Create and Edit section of the Topic Settings area.
When a single-threaded discussion is created, the teacher must create an initial thread to which his or her students will respond. Without this, students will not have the opportunity to post.
In preparation for the Spring AzMERIT assessments for ELA and Math, teachers were introduced to the various item specifications and opportunity was given for practice.
A number of the assessment items within the digital platform are interactive and require students to do more than just choose an answer option. Digital annotation, drag and drop, and answer choice with justification, are just a few examples of the types of interaction and thinking involved.
Digital tools are becoming more intuitive and responsive to educational assessment needs. While there is a growing trend of creating engaging formative assessments, there is also a need to provide appropriate practice with digital assessments.
Edulastic.com and Edcite.com are two assessment websites that allow teachers to create tests with interactive tools that are similar to items used in AzMERIT.
Assessment
Resources