Currently, some of our courses have a discussion board to allow students to start conversations about your class with other students and your instructor. You can comment on the discussion board at any time to spark new conversations.
To access the discussion board for your course, first log in to the learning portal, and then go to your course. From there, go to the menu on the left side of the page and you should see something that says "General Class Discussion" at the top, and a button below it that says "Go To Community". Click on this button to go to the discussion board.
On this page you will see a menu on the left side of the screen with multiple tabs that section out a discussion section for each week. There is also a general class discussion section where you can post general questions or comments about your course. Click on a section to view it, and this section and the posts will populate the middle of the screen.
To create a post, click on the text box at the top of the page that says "Write a post in Week 1 Discussion..." or "Write a post in Week 2 Discussion...", for example. Give your post a title, write up your post, and even add a video, image, or other file if you'd like. To publish your post, click on "create post". This post will be public to your classmates and professor. From here, people can like and comment on your post.
By default, there is a prompt in the text box that says "Type @ to mention another member in your post" and this feature is optional, but is useful if you want to notify another member in the class about something, as using this will notify that person via email that they were mentioned in your post and will make sure that they see it. This feature is also available when you comment on a post. To mention someone, type @ and the users name that you would like to mention. When you first start typing it will suggest users, and you can click on the user you're looking for for it to fill in. Make sure that you select a user from the small menu that pops up, since if you only write the users name it will not notify them.
To like a post, click on the heart button with a number next to it in the bottom left corner of a post. To comment on a post, click the button to the right of the heart button that will say "0 comments", "1 comment" for example. When you click on comments it will bring you to that persons post, and you can write and post a comment by typing in the text box below the post, and then clicking the "post comment" button. When you like or comment on someones post, the author of the post will be notified via email that there was an interaction on their post, if they are "following" that post. By default, you will be "following" any post that you and any other user in your class publish and will receive an email notification when people comment. To "unfollow" someones post or your own post to no longer receive notifications about interactions on it, go to the post, and on the right side, hover your mouse over where it says "following" and then click the button to unfollow.
To edit, pin, or delete your post, click the three dots in the top right corner of your post, and click any one of the options. Pinning your post will put it at the top of the discussion board so that it will be seen first when scrolling through the discussion board, no matter the time it was posted. By default, posts are sorted by the time they were posted, putting the most recent at the top.
For more information on using the learning portal, please see these other articles:
How to Print Materials from the Learning Portal
For more assistance, you may reach out to us via email at hspstaff@arizona.edu