Discussion boards are designed for asynchronous communication, meaning students and instructors do not have to be online at the same time to have a conversation. Conversations are grouped into threads that contain a main posting and all related replies for easy retrieval.

Discussion boards are often part of online course participation. Here is an example of using an online discussion board.

1. Log on to http://my.asu.edu and click on your course.

2. Click the Communication link in the navigation menu. Your instructor may have also added a Discussion Board link in the navigation menu that will take you directly to the forums.
   
   Figure 1

3. Click the Discussion Boards link.
   
   Figure 2

4. Once you click on the Discussion Boards link all forums are displayed. In this example two forums are listed, Virtual Cafe and US: Bill of Rights. Notice there are 3 messages in the Virtual Cafe forum and all are new (or unread).
   
   Figure 3

5. To access a forum click the topic link.
   
   Figure 4

6. All threads in the forum are displayed. To read a thread click on the appropriate subject link.
   
   Figure 5

7. After clicking on the subject link, the message is displayed.
   
   Figure 6

8. To read the messages in a thread, click the Next Message icon, as in the example figure below.
   
   Figure 7

9. After reading any message you can reply to it by clicking the Reply button.
   
   Figure 8

10. The response window is displayed and is ready for you to enter content. The subject is the same as the original message Re: Original Subject. You have the option to change the subject to something more descriptive. You can type the message or copy and paste text from another source.
    
    Figure 9

11. When your message is complete, scroll down and click the Submit button.
    
    Figure 10

12. Your new message is now displayed.
    
    Figure 11

Additional help resources for discussion boards are located on ASUonline within the student tutorials section.