ed discussion is a question and answer discussion board used for teaching and learning. It can be accessed through a Blackboard Learn course or directly through the ed discussion website, via the Imperial College single sign-on.  

ed discussion facilitates collaborative interaction among students and is designed to model face-to-face group discussions, allowing for the creation of complex questions and answers.

Questions can be posed by both students and instructors, and answers can generate additional follow-up questions and answers, adding clarity and depth to the original post. Instructors have the option to endorse or reply to student answers increasing the appetite for student collaboration.

Available features include:

• Discussion board posts can be marked as Read as in the discussion tool, but can also be marked as Unread, Starred, Answered, Unanswered, as well as organised into categories that you define. These categorisations can then be used to filter the display of posts.
• Allows for the insertion of runnable programming code snippets.
• Discussion threads can be made private, available to instructors only.
• Discussions can be configured to allow anonymous posts, opening options for peer and instructor feedback.
• Links to all the courses in which ed discussion is used are immediately available in the ed discussion interface, allowing to easily switch to other discussions.
• Maths equations and other symbols may be added to posts by entering LaTex markup.
• ed discussion supports the creation of Post Templates. Post templates allow instructors to define a structure for student posts, outlining for example the information you expect to be included in each post.
• Supports the use of Markdown for formatting posts.
• Integrated notifications allow users to send announcements to the entire class or to be notified when a user responds to a specific post.
• Commonly used replies may be saved and reused. This is helpful when offering recurring feedback on student posts.