Discussion Boards allow students to engage with each other and with the instructor asynchronously. The instructor can create a forum with a particular topic or instructions. The instructor can write a post to the forum to get things started, and ask students to respond, or can direct students to create their own posts and respond to each other.
A Discussion Board Forum assumes that each user may access the forum on their own schedule. The user can write an original post or respond to existing posts from others, and then leave the forum. Later, the same user may check back to see if there are new posts or if someone has responded to a post.
By default, a new forum is not gradable, but the instructor has the option of making the forum gradable while creating it or later while editing it. When the instructor makes a forum gradable, a column for that forum is automatically created in the Grade Center, and any posts made by students to that forum will trigger an entry in the instructor's "Needs Grading" queue.
Some of the settings more commonly used include the following:
CLICK HERE to visit Blackboard's Help page about Creating Discussion Board Forums
CLICK HERE to visit Blackboard's Help page about Managing Discussion Board Forums
CLICK HERE to visit Blackboard's Help Page about Grading Discussion Board Forums