Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Tech Tip Tuesday - Adding Content To The Discussion Boards (Student Tutorial)

This week's tip focuses on teaching our students how to correctly add content into discussion boards without adding any extra code that could blank out any replies down the road.  This is a very frustrating issue we've been dealing with in the past month or so.  We hope the internet gods come up with a solution soon but in the meantime...

If you plan to share this post with your students please DO NOT share this blog post (this blog is for faculty not students) but just copy the info below into an announcement.

"If this past semester you've seen discussion board replies being 'blanked' out then this tutorial will help you troubleshoot what is happening to prevent it in the future.  We all know how frustrating the discussion boards can be when extra code has been accidentally added in.  This actually isn't a Blackboard issue it's an internet browser issue and more specifically a security issue.  The government has recently cracked down on internet browsers to prevent plagiarism of websites.  Since you, as an online learning student, are trying to create content online this hits us especially hard.

We see this most frequently when students and instructors are replying to an initial discussion board post.  The replies are submitted but then nothing shows up.  It actually isn't the people replying that have 'bad code' but the person that initially started the thread.  The bad part is students can't edit their post to fix it so once the damage has been done it becomes a trickle down effect.

We still require students to use Firefox.  We also would like to require users at this time to use a real internet browser for discussion board posts not a tablet or mobile browser.  Even on Windows 8 make sure you are not using the 'tile mode browser' but the real windows browser until this gets straightened out.  Please view this video tutorial.  It will help you double check your discussion board posts before you submit.  

If you need help please submit a ticket to tech connection."

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