Discussion Board forums can be accessed from the Discussion Board tool that lists all the forums in the course. This centralized view is an easy access point, but there are other ways to access Discussion Board forums that immerse the user in the learning experience. For example, Discussion Board forums can be placed in any content area. Thus, a Discussion Board forum may appear following lecture notes on the same topic. Further, using adaptive release or date availability restrictions, the forum may only appear after users complete the lesson or after the Instructor has delivered the lecture in class.
Follow these steps to add a forum within a content area.
Open the Control Panel and navigate to the Content Area and folder where the forum will appear.
On the right side of the action bar, select Discussion Board from the Select drop-down list. Click Go.
Choose Select a Discussion Board Forum and select a forum from the list. Click Next.
Note that the Discussion Board page option will link to the Discussion Board Page and show all the forums in the course. Click create new forum to build a new forum. The forum will not appear in the desired content area after creation. Navigate back to the content area and use the Select a Discussion Board Forum option to place the new forum in the correct location.
Add information about the link on the next page. This determines how the link to the forum will appear in the content area. Click Submit.
Discussion Board links are subject to date restrictions and adaptive release restrictions. When restrictions are in place users cannot access the forum from within the content area or from within the Discussion Board tool. The Instructor always has access to every forum through the Control Panel.