Blackboard Blogs are an open communications tool for students to share their thoughts with others in the course. Blogs consist of:

• Blog entries – text, images, links, multimedia, Mashups, and attachments added by course members
• Comments – remarks or responses to blog entries made by other course members, including the instructor(s)

A blog can be graded or ungraded and can be open to entries from the whole course or just from an individual.

• Blackboard Blogs for Instructors (PDF)

The Blackboard Discussion Board allows for an open, asynchronous discussion among course members. Instructors create forums with topic and/or questions that prompt students to start conversation threads, which other course members can reply. Instructors have the option to grade or not grade based upon a forum or individual threads when creating new forums.

• Blackboard Discussion Board for Instructors (PDF)
• University of Oregon's Generating and Facilitating Engaging and Effective Online Discussions Handout

Blackboard Journals offer students a private opportunity to interact directly with the instructor and reflect on a course's content. Private by default, instructors must first create the journal before students respond with journal entries. Journals are gradable and instructors can choose to open journals up to the rest of the course to read and comment on.

• Blackboard Journals for Instructors (PDF)

NEW to Blackboard Learn 9.1, Blackboard Wikis is a collaborative tool that allows students to contribute and modify one or more pages of course-related materials. Judging individual participation in a group collaborative effort is a main focus of the Blackboard Wikis, to the extent that instructors can view each student's interaction with wiki pages and can grade based upon that participation.

• Blackboard Wikis for Instructors (PDF)