While students who take online courses might be thousands of miles away from their nearest classmate, working in groups is still a valuable skill to have. BlackBoard has several different capabilities that facilitate this sort of work.

• Collaboration Tools can be used as a sort of live, virtual classroom session involving both the professor and the students.

• Discussion Boards can be used by students to post ideas about discussion topics chosen by the professor. It is not a "real-time" tool, so students can post to the forums at any time.

• Group Pages can be used by the professor to create a forum reserved for the use of designated groups. These group pages may include the tools listed above, along with areas for exchanging files and emails.

-- MichaelVoigt - 28 Mar 2005