Instructions for Using BRC Report Discussion Board

 

Welcome to the Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) public discussion site. If you just want to read the postings by other people, you do not have to do anything more. Read to your heart’s content. However, the BRC and the other readers of this discussion site want to hear your thoughts and opinions on the issues raised in the report and the comments posted by others.

 

We are using a service provided by a private company to host the discussion group (http://myfastforum.org). Following are the instructions to enter the discussion of this report. A few minutes of orientation and climbing the gentle learning curve will be richly rewarded by a more enjoyable experience of reading and posting messages.

 

1. Surf to http://brcreport.myfastforum.org/ In case you had not yet downloaded the BRC Report, “Creating a New Vision for the Future,” it is available through the BRC website http://blueribboncommission.org

 

2. Decide if you want to register for the discussion. It is your choice. Anyone can read the messages and post them anonymously. The only difference is that if you register you receive additional privileges (see below in FAQs).

 

3. If you decide to register, click on  “Join! (free)” in the menu bar at the top of the page. After you register, each time you visit this discussion forum, you would click on “Log in” at the top of the page.

 

4. The web discussion board uses three important terms which are defined below:

a. Forums. These are the major threads or broad topic areas for discussion. These have been preassigned by the BRC web administrator (David Arendale). The first forum is for questions about how the forum works. The second forum provides a place to post general comments about the report. The remaining six forums are for more focused comments and discussions on the six sections of the report.

 

b. Topics. Just as the title says, these are more specific topics or issues within each of the forums. These topics can be created by anyone. Just click on the “new topic” button to create one. If you click on the button, you will be asked to name the topic and to create a message. Hopefully other people will then make replies to this new topic area. 

 

c. Replies. These are message posts that reply to topics that have been previously created. Click on the “post reply” button to create one.

 

5. Use the title line of the posting composition box to provide a short descriptive phrase about your message. This is especially important when replying to other messages.

 

6. Carefully consider where you will post your message. While we have provided a “General Comments” forum, you are highly encouraged to break down long messages about several topics into a series of smaller ones. Post your smaller messages to the appropriate forums. This will make it easier to follow the discussion and encourage others to directly reply and build on your comments.

 

7. For longer replies, you can either type directly into the posting composition box or you could compose it in your favorite word processing program and cut-and-paste it into the composition box. An added advantage of this is that you can run spell check on it there. They did not include that option for this online discussion board.

8. Due to heavy traffic at this web site, sometimes the system is slow and it may take 10 seconds for a screen of information to appear. Please be patient with the process.

 

9. Additional questions can be answered by posting them to the first discussion forum, “General Support for Using this Discussion Board”. The information from this handout has been posted to this discussion section as well. Additional information is provided in the following FAQ section.

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

 

Why don’t I just look at the answers to frequently asked questions that is available in the menu by clicking on “FAQ” at the top of the page?

You probably ought to. I include some FAQs that either were not addressed or were not very clear. This FAQ answers just enough to get you started. Click on the FAQ on the discussion page for more complete information.

 

Where are the “links” on this page? They seem invisible.

You will need to run your mouse cursor over the web page to discover the links to the menu items and where to read/post messages.

 

Do I have to become a registered user to post messages?

No, anyone can read or post a message. Registered users have a few extra benefits like: a signature block that appears below their posting; ability to edit a message once it has been posted; name appears beside their message in the directory; etc. The registration process does not require lots of personal information, and sections of it can be left blank.

 

If I decide to register for this discussion, do I have to have my real name displayed by the messages?

Generally people use their real names. However, you have an option to use just your first name or a completely different “display name” on the posting. On other discussion forums I sometimes use “Fred Flintstone” or “Barney Fife” (obviously I watch way too much television).

 

Why can’t I make more subtopics under topics like I can with Blackboard, WebCT, and other course management systems?

The public domain software program, which this company uses, just isn’t designed to do more than have three levels of discussion: forums, topics within forums, and replies to the topics. We spent lots of time looks for a free online system that looked like them, and this was as close as we could get.

 

Why do some of the services for registered members not work?

As a policy decision, some of the services were disabled like private messages between online participants and the ability to delete messages once posted (although you can still edit them). It was especially important to deny deleting posted messages since this also deletes everyone’s message that had responded to the one that you posted and now want to delete.

 

Why does advertising appear on the discussion board?

While the discussion board service is provided free for us to use, it has advertisements. Someone has to pay the bills for this service. We do not have control over the advertisements or where they pop up. We tried to find a way to use course management systems like Blackboard or WebCT at someone’s college for this purpose, but ran into lots of problems with access and security.