Discussion - Frequently Asked Questions

What do the discussion analysis metrics mean? New

Discussion analysis provides a closer look at how your students participate in discussions. As you grade a discussion, you can use these metrics to help determine a grade:

  • Substantive posts: The number of responses and replies that contribute to the discussion's development. A post is deemed "substantive" based on word count and word variety. These posts show critical thinking or advanced composition.
  • Sentence complexity: Average grade level readability for the student's posts using the Flesch-Kincaid linguistic standard which uses both sentence complexity, sentence length, and word length.
  • Lexical variation: Count of content words and functional words. Content words support the student's ideas, while functional words support proper grammar.
  • Critical thinking level: Percentage of words and phrases within a student's total posts that demonstrate critical thinking.
  • Word variation: Percentage of unique words in a student's responses and replies.
  • Discussion details: responses, replies, and average word count for each student and the class average

These metrics are only visible to instructors. They are not intended to translate directly to a grade but rather to provide you with analysis that might contribute to the grade achieved. Learn more about the discussion analysis metrics.

Why don't I see any results in the discussion analysis? New

At least one discussion must be graded before discussion analysis is generated. Discussion analysis refreshes nightly for active discussions. The data won't update if there's no new discussion activity on a given day. You'll see data in the Discussion Analysis panel if the student has participated within the last four months.

Only instructors and graders can see the discussion analysis.

How can I set up my discussion board forums so I get an email when students add a new post or reply to a post?

You can follow a discussion to get notifications on your Activity page every time there is new activity from instructors or students in a specific discussion. Click the Follow button next to the discussion topic to follow a discussion. 

You can configure your Blackboard notification settings from the Activity or Profile page to determine when email notifications are sent. If you set your email notifications to Email me right away, you can receive an immediate email notification for any discussions you follow as well as other activity in Blackboard. Note that you cannot set different notification frequencies for individual notifications.

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