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Mentor's Circle Help FAQ:
How to Participate in Class Discussion
Every classroom has a discussion board or "whiteboard" where students can post homework, ask questions, and interact with classmates. Instructors and mentors can use this "whiteboard" to answer questions, provide feedback on homework, and join in class discussions. This FAQ provides helpful tips and shortcuts for using whiteboards.
Classrooms and whiteboards can be accessed 24/7 from your VU desk at http://vu.org/mydesk — just log in with your Student ID and click the link to your classroom, or click the "BB" link to go directly to the whiteboard. If you are mentoring a class and these links don't appear on your desk, please contact us and let us know the name of the course that should be added.
All classroom whiteboards support "message relaying" — which means that a copy of each message posted is instantly emailed to you (if there is more than one instructor or mentor in a class, copies will be sent to each person.) You receive messages a few seconds after they are posted, and you don't have to log in to the classroom and search through a list of new messages on the whiteboard.
Message relaying can be turned or or off as you wish. The default setting is "Relaying On." Most mentors like this feature because it saves time; however, if you are mentoring a large class that generates a large volume of messages, you may prefer to turn relaying off. You will then need to log in to your whiteboard to browse and reply to messages. If you'd like message relaying turned off (or turned back on), please let us know.
Quick Links

Assuming that "message relaying" is enabled, you will notice three handy links at the top of each message forwarded to you.
    REPLY TO MESSAGE - Click this link and a message reply window will open in your browser. Simply compose your message, click the SUBMIT button, and your reply will be posted on the class board.
    VIEW MESSAGE INDEX - This link will take you directly to your whiteboard message index.
    DELETE MESSAGE - Clicking this link will delete the current message from the whiteboard. This is an easy way to remove duplicate, off-topic or otherwise inappropriate messages. But be careful! There is no "Undo" option – if you delete a message, it is gone forever! Also, deleting a message will delete all replies that message.
When replying to forwarded messages in your email reader, please remember that you must click the "Reply to Message" link as shown above and a browser window will open where you can compose your reply. Don't use your email program's Reply command or your message will not be posted on the class board!
Posting Announcements

You may want to post announcements on your class whiteboard. If you'd like your message to be highlighted in a contrasting color so it will be easily noticed by students, type three exclamation points at the beginning of the Subject field, and then type your message subject. For example: 
!!!IMPORTANT, Please Read
The exclamation points will be filtered out when you post the message and it will be highlighted.

Suggestions

We are continually adding new features to make VU whiteboards more useful. If you would like to suggest a new feature or other improvement, please contact us.

  


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