An important feature of the ELO is the possibility to communicate. Blackboard offers the following communication options:

1. Email
   From within Blackboard, you can quickly send emails to course participants and supervisors. Emails are sent from Blackboard, with a copy to the sender, but are not saved in Blackboard.
2. Discussion Board
   Participants can make contributions to a subject in a discussion thread and respond to each other and hence learn how to participate in discussions. Instructors and Teaching Assistents can monitor the discussions and are able to give feedback. Assessment results can be automatically entered in the Grade Book.
3. Blogs
   Using a blog, a student is able to maintain a kind of a public logbook. A blog is commonly used to publish ideas or interpretations. They can be commented by other students in the course or in the coursegroup.
4. Journals
   With a journal, a student can make a logbook with reflections about his/her own activities. The logbook is shared with an Instructor or a Teaching Assistent, to give them the ability to provide the student with feedback. Although it can be made Public, a Journal is principally speaking not a means of communication between students. Journals can be graded if desirable.
5. Wiki’s
   Via a Wiki, students are able to mutually draught webdocuments, so usually Wiki’s are setup as a group-assignment. Normally spoken, the content of the webdocument will be related to the subject of the course they are assigned to. Wiki’s are often graded.

Although these means of communication are usually made available from within a course or a coursegroup, it is also possible to deploy them in a broader fashion (via an organization).