Canvas discussion resign - what to look for

This video from CTE TAMU (5:14 mins) shows the new features you will meet in the Redesign that became standard at KI on 20 July.

Recommended: ACUE (Association of College and University Educators) Online Toolkit including guide for creating Q&A and social forums.

Important! For students to be able to create discussions in the course, you need to show the option Discussions in the menu and have chosen the option for students to be able to create discussions. Bear in mind that this can lead to students creating "orphan" discussions which may not want them to. Under Settings you can turn off student privileges for creating discussions (even if they do see the Discussion course menu.

If the course includes obligatory discussions, we recommend that you set them as Graded discussions. This way, you can keep track of which students have taken part and grade the student's posts separately.

Free discussion topics

Create a free discussion topic

Click on Discussions
Click on +Discussion. Write the post, and then click on Save.

Discussion notifications in dashboard view

In the Dashboard view you can see if there are any new discussions in a course (new discussion threads, not posts in total).

Discussion view

There is help to find the right discussion on each page of the discussion page:

For every discussion, two numbers are marked. The first (pink) shows how many unread replies there are in the discussion, the other shows how many posts there are in total.För varje diskussion som innehåller minst ett svar finns två siffror.
The green flag shows when you have subscribed to receive notifications from a discussion.
The pink flag shows that you are not subscribed to receive notifications. You can click on it to subscribe (you cannot as a teacher subscribe to group discussions).
The solid pink dot shows that there are unread posts for you to read in this discussion.

NOTE: There is a setting within the course which allows you to switch off students' ability to start discussion threads.

Discussion as an Graded assignment

Creating a graded discussion 1

Add a discussion to a module, so it is obvious that it is an assignment. Click on the plus symbol on the module.
Click on the discussion option.
Choose to create a new discussion.
Pick a title.
Click Add item.

Creating a graded discussion 2

Click on the heading for the discussion and then the edit button. Write a text which describes clearly what the students should discuss. Scroll down on the page.

Creating a graded discussion 3

Check the box to select a graded discussion.
Say how many points are available for the best possible result.
Choose how the assessment should be shown for the students. For the simplest possible setting, we suggest 1 point, and show as 'Complete/Incomplete'.

Further down on the page, it is possible to assign a submission date for the discussion, after which the discussion disables the ability to create further posts. It is not possible to create a submission date for a discussion which is not graded.

Don't forget to save and publish!

Group discussions is a practical function which allows you set set the same discussion question to all groups at the same time. This function is shown on the page on Assignments & Group Assignments

To grade an obligatory discussion

Obligatory discussions show up in the grading view. Click on Grades in the course menu to come to a list of all your students.

Grading Graded discussions

You can see here how clear it is who has, and who has not taken part in the discussion. Choose SpeedGrader to see each student's posts individually, and to be able to grade them. In the same way as with assignments, you can write personal comments to every student here.

How does this look for the student?

Discussions in student view

Discussions look the same for students and teachers - an introductory text written by the person who started the discussion, and a box to click on to answer. If it's a graded discussion, this is shown clearly in a box above the discussion. Canvas has annoying habit of wanting to show "points" everywhere. You may wish to at least give a symbolic 1 point instead of the forum presenting 0 points in the discussion heading.

Graded discussions appear in other places within Canvas, for example, on the assignments page, and at the bottom of the course overview.

Tasks to complete to earn the diploma

Task: Make a graded discussion. Set a submission date. Don’t forget to write a short description of the assignment for the students. Try out posting in the discussion. Do you see the subscribe button at the top? Don’t forget that it is possible to set up for notifications from discussions to be forwarded to your email. Observe that it is not possible for teachers to subscribe to group discussions. Students can subscribe to discussions in each of their groups.