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Using WebBoard UIS
III. Understanding the WebBoard Environment
In WebBoard, each course has its own private space, called a virtual board. Within each board are conferences that have been set up by the course instructor. Conferences can be topical, such as a discussion of the most recent lecture topic, or they can be functional, for instance, a place for students to privately submit homework assignments to the instructor. Conferences can be open to everyone in the class, or can have limited membership--for example the instructor can set up teams of students, with each team having its own private conference.
The WebBoard environment has three main parts:
- the menubar,
- the Conferences menu, and
- the Message window.
The actual appearance of the Conferences menu and Message window varies depending on whether or not you view WebBoard within frames (frames is an option you can turn on and off).
The Menubar
The black menu bar appears across the top of the WebBoard screen; it is made up of eight buttons. Each button is listed below with a description of its function.
- Creates a new topic in the current conference. A message form will appear for you to fill in.
- Updates the displayed information from the WebBoard server. When you post a new message or reply, it won't show up in the Conference Menu until you refresh the screen
- Opens the list of available chat rooms. Click on the name of a conference chat room to open it.
- Opens the Message Search window. In order to search for a particular word or phrase, you can search messages in all the conferences at once, or choose one or more specific conferences.
- Opens the Mark Messages Read window. From here you can mark all messages in all conferences as "read," or mark only the messages in a specific conferences.
- Opens the More Options window. Options available include email notification of new messages, seeing who's currently online, searching for users, and choosing to view new messages.
- Opens a new browser window showing WebBoard's online help index. To see the help for a particular subject, click on its link in the index.
The Conferences Menu
The Conferences menu displays a board's conferences and messages in a hierarchical list. The list always appears over a yellow background with the label Conferences at the top of the window. With frames turned on, the conference menu appears on the left half of the WebBoard screen.Conferences
Conferences are the highest order heading in the Conferences menu. For example, in the picture below, "Building an ALN Course" and "How do I?" are conferences. The "How do I?" conference is opened showing two messages. A conference that contains messages will have a small box at its left, showing a plus (+) or minus (-) sign. To view the contents of a conference, click on its name. The plus sign will change to a minus, indicating that the conference is open for viewing.
Topics
Conferences are made up of threaded discussions, messages that are related to each other as original posts and replies. Messages can be replies to other messages, or they can be original statements posing a question, or stating an opinion or explanation of something. A topic is an original message--that is, one that is not a reply to a previous post. In WebBoard, topics are indented two spaces under a conference. There can be multiple topics in a conference.Topics are displayed in a manner similar to conferences. A small box to the left of a topic indicates that the topic contains replies. When the topic is opened so that the contents can be viewed, the small box changes from a plus (+) to a minus (-) sign. To open a topic (to see the messages related to it), click on the plus sign. Note: If you click on the subject line of a topic, WebBoard will display the related message in the Message window.
A conference will only display 20 subject lines at a time (topics and replies combined). When there are 20 or more lines, up and down arrow icons (
and
) will appear next to the conference name. Click on these to scroll up and down through the list of subject lines. Also, when the list of topics and replies gets long, WebBoard will also display Top and Bottom links in the list. Click on Top to go to the top of the list, and Bottom to go the bottom.
Messages and Replies
Once a topic has been posted, people generally post messages replying to it. They may also send replies to replies. Replies are shown indented one space under the message to which it is related.In the example shown below, the "Building an ALN Course" conference has two posts (indicated by the number 2 in parentheses to the right of it). The conference is open, showing the topic, a message from Lisa Hoff dated 07/08, with the subject "Welcome!" Also shown is the reply from Jolee West on 07/21, which retained the "Welcome!" subject line of the topic. Note how the topic is indented under the conference, and in turn, the reply is indented relative to the topic.
The Message Window
The WebBoard Message window has a white background. If frames are turned on, the Message window appears on the right half of the WebBoard screen. This is where the WebBoard Welcome screen, messages, and search, and configuration screens are displayed.
Please send comments and suggestions to the UIS webmaster.
Written content provided by Jolee West and the Sloan Center for Asynchronous Learning Environments .
