Wiki Page, Sandbox Kevin: [MODULE 2] Designing Discussions

Wiki Page
2023-08-31T11:12:26-06:00

Discussions can serve as a forum for topical and current events in your course, as well as, a space for students to discuss upcoming projects, solve problems and converse. Canvas provides an integrated system for focused and threaded discussions, which allows both instructors and students to start and contribute to as many discussion topics as desired.

Discussion Options

As we've already mentioned, discussions can be created as an assignment for grading purposes or remain ungraded (i.e., an "Introduce Yourself" topic or "Student Forum" topic for course Q&A).

Graded Discussions
If you plan on having graded discussions in your course,
consider the following options to avoid 'cheaters':

Enable: Users must post before seeing replies

Disable: Let students edit or delete their own discussion posts

When designing discussions you want to consider the following options:

Will the discussion be threaded or unthreaded?

Should podcast feed be enabled?

Should students see posts only after they've submitted their post first?

Will it be graded or ungraded?

If you set a discussion to 'graded' then the options for creating an assignment will appear.

Organizing Your Discussions

In addition to the above options, instructors have the ability to pin or close a discussion.

Pinned Discussions. These are discussions that you want your students to see at the top of their page. Pinned discussions can be arranged in any order. Students will only see this section heading if there are discussions within this section.

Closed for Comments. These discussions have been manually closed for comments, or the discussion is past the available from/until date. These are discussions that are only available in a read-only state. Closed for comments discussions are also ordered by most recent activity. Students will always see this section heading, even if there are no discussions within this section.

Additional Course Settings Related to Discussions

Under your course settings, you also have a few student options related to discussions that control the student experience, such as:

Let students attach files to discussions

Let students create discussion topics

Let students edit or delete their own discussion posts

The following tutorials provide additional details about Discussions:

What are Discussions for instructors?

What is the difference between Announcements and Discussions?

How do I use the Discussions Index Page?

How do I use Draft State in Discussions?

What is the difference between threaded and focused discussions?

How do I view and sort discussion replies as an instructor?

How do I create a discussion as an instructor?

How do I create a group discussion in a course?

How do I assign a graded discussion to an individual student or course section?

How do I assign a graded discussion to a course group?

How do I edit a discussion in a course?

How do I attach a file to a discussion reply as an instructor?

How do I enable a podcast feed for a discussion in a course?

How do I delay posting a discussion until a specified date in a course?

How can I require students to post to a course discussion before they see replies?

How do I pin a discussion in a course?

How do I close a discussion for comments in a course?

How do I delete a discussion in a course?

How do I reply to a discussion as an instructor?

How do I allow students to like replies in a discussion?

How do I like a reply in a course discussion?

How do I allow students to attach files to a course discussion?

How do I allow students to create a course discussion?

How do I allow students to edit and delete their own discussion posts in a course?

How do I change discussion settings to manually mark discussion replies as read?

How do I mark discussion posts as read or unread as an instructor?

How do I subscribe to a discussion as an instructor?

How do I edit or delete student discussion posts in a course?

How do I link to a YouTube video in a discussion reply as an instructor?

How do I embed an image in a discussion reply as an instructor?

What is a peer review discussion?

How do I create a peer review discussion?

How do I manually assign peer reviews for a discussion?

How do I automatically assign peer reviews for a discussion?