Discussions

We are preparing guides for a new version of Discussions. In the meantime, please see Canvas's guides regarding Discussions Links to an external site..

Discussion Forum

The discussion forum is available to all participants in a course. All participants are also able to start new discussions provided that the settings for that are enabled. This could be useful if you want to encourage your students to start new discussions about a subject that affects everyone. 

Create a new discussion

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  1. Click Discussions in the course menu.
  2. Click +Diskussion.

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3. Give your discussion a title.
4. Write a descriptive text with clear instructions what the students should discuss.

What You and the Students See

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Dashboard

When a student visits their dashboard and there are new discussions the students will see it clearly on the course cards.

In this example, there is one new discussion in Demografi UU19.

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Discussion Forum Overview

This is what the symbols and numbers mean inside the discussion forum:

  1. In a discussion that has more than one response, there will be two numbers indicating the amount of replies in said discussion. The first number is the unread amount, and the second number is the amount of responses total. 
  2. The green flag means you have subscribed to that discussion and will receive notifications (if you your notifications are on.)
  3. The empty flag means you are not subscribed.

Graded Discussion 

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If partaking in a discussion is compulsory, we recommend you create a Graded Discussion. These are displayed under Assignments and have a column in the Gradebook. From there you can see who has partaken in a discussion or not - and mark it as completed/incomplete.

Create a Graded Discussion

Begin by adding a Discussion to a module, so that it is clearly visible to students when they enter the course. 

  1. Click the plus (+) sign in your module of choice.
  2. In the drop down menu, mark that it's a discussion you're creating.
  3. Choose [ New Topic]
  4. Give the discussion a title.
  5. Click Add item.

 

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6. Now click on the title of your new discussion then click on Edit. 

7. Write a descriptive text with instructions on what students should discuss.

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Settings

1. Check Graded.
2. Type the highest possible grade the discussion can receive.
3. Then choose how it will be graded.

To keep it simple, we set grade points to 1 and graded as Complete/incomplete.

If necessary, you can scroll down and add dates and lock dates for the discussion.


Last not least, don't forget to publish the discussion. 

How to grade a discussion 

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All graded or compulsory events are listed in the Gradebook. Click on Grades in the course menu to access the Gradebook. From here, you can click on SpeedGrader to see the students posts.

You can also access SpeedGrader from the discussion page itself.

What does the student see?

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Discussions look the same for both students and instructors: a descriptive leading text by the original poster and a box to post a response in. However, if the discussion graded, the student will see a blue box telling them so.

Graded discussions also show up in other areas of the course, such as the Assignments page or in the Course Syllabus.

Group discussion

Studium makes it easy for student groups to create discussions. As soon as a group is created, there is open discussion. As an instructor, you can create discussions which are duplicated to each group automatically. Find out more about group discussion on the page: Group Discussions