Attention:
You may want to give some Discussion Board instruction in your course sites for the use of your students. It has come to my attention several times that students don't connect the difference between Save and Submit at the bottom of a Discussion message form. When they perform the +Thread or Reply functions they get the form to type in a subject and a message when they have completed that task they have 3 buttons at the bottom of the page; Cancel, Save, & Submit. Often times I think that they connect this with saving documents and other things on their own computer; such is not the case with a Discussion Board posting in Blackboard.
When they elect Save instead of Submit the discussion board saves a copy of the posting that they have been working on as a draft. This is a good thing if the student needs to go back and make changes or edit the piece after consideration. This draft however is only accessible to the student (not even an administrator can access it). Using Submit is the only way that the posting becomes available to the instructor and the remaining members of the class. I have made a brief video demonstration that may help. Please feel free to copy the link.
Discussion Board
Nancy
