Body
Discussions are a good way to encourage students to think critically about your coursework and interact with each others' ideas. You can create discussions around individual course lessons or for your course in general.
Create Discussions
You can create discussions on the Course Content page or through the Discussions tab.
On the course content page select the plus icon and choose create item. Scroll down to Discussion.
You can also create them directly on the Discussions page by selecting the New Discussion button.
Discussion settings
Select the Discussion and click the Settings button in the top right corner to customize your discussion.
By default, all discussions appear to students on the Course Content page. You can deselect the option if you want students to only view the discussion from the Discussions page.
- Post first- to hide discussion activity from students until they respond to the discussion. When you want to use both post first and groups, select Post first before you assign groups.
- Prevent editing if you don't want students to be able to edit their discussions after posting them.
- Anonymous responses and replies- make discussion posts anonymous if you'd like students to feel more free to share their thoughts without judgment. You can turn anonymous posts on and off. Any posts made while anonymous keep their anonymity if anonymous posts are later turned off. You can't grade anonymous discussions.
- Grade discussion- To motivate students to post insightful contributions, you can make the discussion count for a grade.
- Groups- You can assign students to discussion groups so that fewer people are involved. You can also assign a specific topic to each group.
- Release conditions- The visibility settings of a learning module or folder also apply to discussions within them. However, visibility settings on the Discussions page are separate. For example, a discussion set to Visible to students within a folder set to hidden won’t be on the Course Content page. However, that same discussion will be available to students on the Discussions page.
Graded discussions
When you choose to grade a discussion, more options appear in the settings, such as the due date and maximum points. The maximum points apply to one or more posts made by a student. When you enable grading for a discussion, a column is created automatically in the gradebook.
Graded discussions have a Grades & Participation tab that tracks your progress with grading.
You also have access to several kinds of discussion analytics. Select a student’s name on the Grades & Participation tab to view their discussion entry’s analytics. You can view whether or not a post is substantive, its sentence complexity, and other information.
Respond to a discussion
In your course access a discussion from the Course Content page or from the Discussions page.
Replies are indented from responses. All course members can access who created the discussion.
You can use the options in the editor to format text, attach files, and embed multimedia.
Follow a discussion
In your course access a discussion from the Course Content page or from the Discussions page. Select follow in the top right corner of the discussion.
If you no longer want to receive notifications for a discussion, select Unfollow. You can also refresh a discussion to see if there were any updates by selecting the arrows beside Follow or Unfollow.
You can control what sorts of notifications you get for discussions you follow by going to Settings on your Activity page.
You can select or deselect receiving notifications for:
- Activity on my responses
- Activity on responses I have replied to
- Responses from instructors
- Responses for followed discussions
- Replies for followed discussions
You can also receive emails for followed discussions by going to your Email me right away settings from the same Settings menu on your Activity page. The notifications available are:
- Activity on my responses
- Activity on responses I have replied to
- Responses from instructors
- Responses for followed discussions
- Replies for followed discussions
Delete responses and replies
Instructors can edit or delete anyone's responses and replies. Students can delete only their own responses and replies.
Open the menu for a response or reply to access the Edit and Delete functions. If you delete an initial response, all replies remain. The system displays a message about your deletion so others know what happened.