Discussion Groups

Discussion areas are places located on your school's web site where you can post a message.  Whoever wants to can come by and read your message.  Discussion areas give you time to think about what you're going to say before sending your words out for others to view.  Discussions are arranged in threads, so you can see messages on the same topic, like a conversation.

You can usually sort messages in discussion areas by the date of the message, the author, or the thread that the messages are in. If you want to be sure that you read all of your teacher's messages for example, sort by the author.  You have two options for creating a message in a discussion area, you can respond to an existing posting and add your message to that thread, or you can begin a new thread by positing a new message.  If you're replying to another person's message, it's sometimes useful to copy and paste a portion of the original message into your reply message to help readers understand the context for your comment.

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Your instructor probably monitors the discussion.  If you plan to compose a lengthier message, consider writing it in a word processing program before you log onto the discussion group, then cutting and pasting the text into a discussion message form.  This approach will save you from having to retype a lot of text if the school server crashes, or disconnects you before you've posted the message.