Communication & Collaboration
Ability to ‘Follow’ Discussions for Enhanced Engagement – 3900.98
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
Related Topic: Discussions
Discussions are an important part of the course experience, allowing for easy collaboration between all course members. The ability to engage and re-engage with discussions ensures that collaboration is active and lively. Users can re-engage when they know there are new posts by following the discussion.
Key Enhancements:
- Follow Discussions: Users can follow select discussions and receive notifications for new contributions from peers or instructors.
- User Notification Settings: New notification options for the Activity Stream settings allow users to manage notification types for discussions:
- Activity on my responses
- Activity on responses I have replied to
- Responses from instructors
- Responses for followed discussions
- Replies for followed discussions
- Administrator Settings: New administrator controls allow institutions to set defaults for the above user settings:
- Discussion activity on the current user’s responses
- Discussion activity on responses the current user has replied to
- Discussion responses from instructors
- Discussion responses and replies for followed
The default settings for these options are all “on.”
Image 1. New ‘Follow’ option inside a discussion
Image 2. New user notification options for the Activity Stream
Image 3. Notifications being delivered to the Activity Stream
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed. Administrators can manage notification settings in the Administrator Panel.