Text box is missing in Discussion Board

Symptoms:

When using the the Discussion Board in the Blackboard Learning System, users are unable to reply to a message.  When clicking on the thread, and then clicking on reply a user will be be prompted with a reply screen.  However, the area in which you would type the message is missing from the screen.

Unexpected Behavior is that the text area is missing. If the student hits send (even though he is not sending anything since there's a message), the error message appears: "You must supply a message".

Resolution:

This means that the student has disabled ActiveX controls and thus cannot use the "Text Box Editor" control (also known as the WYSIWYG editor). Two possibilities are available to solve this problem:

1. In Internet Explorer's security settings, make sure the setting for "Run ActiveX Controls and Plugins" is set to enable for the Internet zone.
2. Alternatively, add the Blackboard site to the "Trusted Sites" zone. The trusted site configuration should have ActiveX enabled by default, and would allow you to enable this for only the Blackboard site.