ANGEL Tip of the Day #37 - Post first in Discussions

’ll bet you’ve seen it – the person who obviously read everyone else’s posts in the discussion and just copied the answers that seemed the most right. Well, you can put a halt to that with the Post First mode in ANGEL. When you set it, students can’t see the discussion board posts until they have made their own post.

To set a discussion in Post First mode, go to the Interaction tab in the Settings of your discussion. The first box there allows you to set the Mode. Choose “Post First” from the drop down menu. Note: This has to be done when you set up the discussion. Once a student posts to the discussion board, you cannot change the mode.

Now that you’ve seen all of those modes, you are probably wondering what the other ones are.

o Normal: All students may access and participate fully in discussion.

o Private user journal: Student posts and instructor replies are only visible to the student and the instructor.

o Private team journal: Posts by team members and instructor replies are only visible to team members and instructors

o Post first: Users must first post a topic before they‘re allowed to view or reply to other student‘s posted topics.

o Fishbowl: Select students or teams to participate in discussion while other selected students or teams may only view discussion.

o Hot seat: Students or teams “in” the hot seat read and reply to topics posted by other students or teams, but may not post new topics themselves.