Once your academy admin enables discussion boards for a course (see Related Articles below), a Discussion Board button appears on that course so learners, instructors, and admins can start and join conversations about it.
Opening a Course's Discussion Board
The Discussion board button is only visible on a course once its own Discussion board course setting is enabled. Where you find it depends on your role:
-
Admins, training managers, the course creator, instructors, and enrolled or assigned learners see a Discussion board button on the course's about page.
(While taking the course, within its theater mode where all the lectures reside, there is a link to the about page at the top of the page.)
-
Admins, training managers, and the course creator also see a Discussion board button inside the Manage Course panel, which opens the same page without leaving the training-admin workspace.
Finding Your Way Around the Discussion Board
The Discussion Board page has a search bar and three tabs:
- Lecture (the default tab) lists a discussion for every visible lecture in the course, in the same order as the course's step configurator. Each entry shows who posted most recently and how long ago, plus the number of posts and views.
- General lists discussions that aren't tied to a specific lecture. You can sort this tab by creation date, newest to oldest or oldest to newest.
- Pending lists new discussion topics and new replies that are waiting for admin approval. This tab only appears when the academy's "All posts need admin approval to become public" setting is turned on, and only shows a count when there's something waiting.
Both the Lecture and General tabs show up to 10 discussions at a time, with pagination for anything beyond that. Use the search bar to find a discussion by its title.
Starting a New Topic
Select Create new post to start a new general discussion, or Reply to post to start a lecture discussion.
Fill in a title and a comment — both are required, and the Create button stays disabled until both fields have content. Select Cancel at any point to collapse the form without creating anything.
- If your academy requires admin approval for posts, you'll see a note that your post needs approval before it becomes visible to everyone in the course, and your topic goes to the Pending tab until an admin, training manager, or course creator approves it.
- If approval isn't required, your topic is published immediately and appears under the General tab.
Reading and Replying to a Discussion
Select any discussion to open it. You'll see the discussion's title, its tag (Lecture or General), the number of views, when it was created, and who created it (select their name to view their profile). From here you can:
- Sort the posts and replies newest to oldest or oldest to newest
- Search within the discussion
- Select Reply to post to add your own reply
- React to any post or reply with one of seven reactions: Like, Love, Celebrate, Thought-provoking, Humor, Applause, and Done
Every post and reply shows the author's photo and name, and when it was posted. If your academy has Team members can edit their thread posts turned on, you'll also see an Edit button on posts and replies you wrote. If posts must be approved in the academy, replies do as well.
Admins, and the person who wrote a given post or reply, can delete it.
Deleting an entire general discussion (available to admins and the discussion's creator) removes it along with every reply in it, after a confirmation step.
Managing Posts Awaiting Approval (Admins, Training Managers, and Course Creator)
When your academy requires admin approval for discussion posts, new topics and new replies wait in the Pending tab until they're reviewed. Each pending item shows who posted it, when, and its content, along with Approve and Decline actions.
- Approve publishes the post or reply and removes it from the Pending tab.
- Decline removes it from the Pending tab without publishing it.
This moderation workflow is available from both the learner-facing course-about-page entry point and the Manage Course panel entry point — they open the same Discussion Board page.