[LON-CAPA-users] Discussion board

[Robley Light]

The discussion board is a great tool to monitor and respond to student
problems, and to let students respond to each other.  It is one of the
strong features of LON-CAPA.

I find a slight annoyance with it, however, and wonder if others feel the
same way.  If so, is there sufficient interest to suggest a feature change?
(Or maybe there has already been such a request).

Following is the scenario:

I look at a problem and there might be half a dozen or more questions, etc,
and I'd like to respond to each person, by name if possible, but do it
efficiently in only one post.  So I click on the submission button for  each
student to find out what their problems are.  However, when I open the post
discussion page, it covers up the questions and if I've forgotten a name or
an point to make, I can't complete it in that post.

I've taken to opening a text editor, putting my comments in the text editor
as I browse the student submissions, then when through opening the post
discussion window and copying from the text editor into that window.

Would it be difficult to have the post discussion open in a second window,
so you could leave it open as you  browse back and forth among the
questions, while adding comments about each question, then submit?  That
would save that extra step of using a separate text editor.

Robley Light

*************************************************************
Robley J. Light                  Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and
Biochemistry
Department of Chemistry          Phone:   (850) 644-3844
   and Biochemistry              Email:  rlight@chem.fsu.edu  
Florida State University         Fax:      (850) 644-8281
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4390    Home Page:
http://www.chem.fsu.edu/editors/rlight