Creating Discussions

What are Canvas Discussions?

Online discussions provide an opportunity for thoughtful contributions and engagement from all students, instead of the usual confident and uninhibited active participants in a face-to-face class. Discussion pages present a prompt for students to respond to, with background context as needed (text, audio, video, images, links). Students can respond to the prompt and to each others’ responses.

Creating a Discussion

Discussion pages are edited just like content (wiki) pages in Canvas, with additional assignment settings such as points and due date. Common configuration options include:

• “Allow threaded replies”: Necessary for students to reply to each other.

• “Users must post before seeing replies”: This makes for less of a conversation and more of a public posting of responses.

• “Allow liking”: Less demanding alternative to replying to posts.

• "Available from / until": Window of time when students can participate.

• Allowing students to attach files to posts is a course-level option (in course Settings)

Facilitating a Discussion

Instructors and TAs create a plan for facilitating their course before it runs, determining how and when they will insert themselves into the course as it runs. This normally includes monitoring discussions and providing feedback and grading for individual student effort, but it may also include posting in the discussion itself, particularly replies to selected student posts.

• Canvas discussions host two main activities: initial replies (or posts) to the prompt and follow-up replies to these posts.

• Box frames visually define two major elements of a Discussion page:

  • Instructions: Background and prompt, initial post button, view and search tools

  • Posts: Initial replies to the prompt and responses to these replies.

    • The initial post can be thought of as a top-level reply

    • Replies (threads)

      • Responses to initial posts are secondary replies, which start a thread. This is where students engage each other.

      • Teachers or TAs may post a comment on the direction of the conversation or reply to students, which everyone will see (as opposed to assignment feedback, through Speedgrader, which only one student sees).