Letting Students Know You've Seen Their BBS Posts Without Directly Replying
Faculty have told us that while they try to stay on top of the BBS discussions in online courses, they don't always have time to respond to student posts. Oftentimes, the faculty will read posts and come back to them at a later time to respond. As a result, many faculty have expressed an interest in a way of letting students know that their posts have been read even if the faculty can't respond right away.
Following up on this request, we've added a small feature to the BBS in online courses. When anyone on the course instructional team (faculty or TAs) views a topic in a BBS, the message "Last Viewed by Instructional Team on [date time of last view]" now appears at the top of the post. This way, students know that someone from the instructional team has read their posts, even if they haven't directly responded to them.
If the faculty and TAs feel that this feature is too intrusive into their activity in the course BBS, this feature can be turned off for the entire course BBS by selecting the apporpriate option in the BBS Admin.