[MODULE 2] Designing Discussions

 

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 Links to an external site. 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 Links to an external site., 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 detail discussions: What are Discussions? Links to an external site. How do I use the Discussion Index Page? Links to an external site. How do I pin a Discussion on the Index Page? Links to an external site. How do I close a Discussion for comments? Links to an external site. How are new Discussions different from old Discussions? Links to an external site. What is the difference between Announcements and Discussions? Links to an external site. When would I use Threaded Discussions? Links to an external site. When would I use Focused Discussions? Links to an external site. How do I create a Graded Discussions for a Specific Section? Links to an external site. How do I start a Discussion? Links to an external site. How do I edit a Discussion topic? Links to an external site. How do I create a Threaded Discussion? Links to an external site. How is a Threaded Discussion organized? Links to an external site. How do I delete a Discussion topic? Links to an external site. How do I set up a graded Discussion? Links to an external site. How do I set up a Group Discussion Assignment? Links to an external site. How do I enable a podcast feed for a Discussion topic? Links to an external site. How do I delay posting a Discussion topic until a specific date? Links to an external site. How can I require students to post to a Discussion before they see replies? Links to an external site. How do I reply to a Discussion? Links to an external site. How do I add content to my Discussion? Links to an external site. How do I allow students to attach files to a Discussion? Links to an external site. How do I allow students to start a new Discussion? Links to an external site. How do I allow students to edit and delete their own Discussions posts? Links to an external site. How do I edit or delete student Discussion posts? Links to an external site. How do I attach a file to a Discussion reply? Links to an external site. How do I link to a YouTube video in a Discussion reply? Links to an external site. How do I insert an image file in a Discussion reply? Links to an external site. How do I mark Discussion posts as read or unread? Links to an external site. How do I manually mark my Discussion posts as read? Links to an external site. How do I subscribe to a Discussion as an instructor? Links to an external site.