Instructors can set up Discussions to engage students with course content. Students can respond to a prompt, view their peers’ responses, and reply.
Creating Discussions
To create a Discussion, click Discussions, and then click +Discussion.
Give the discussion a title and enter instructions or a prompt. Under Options, you can designate a variety of settings, including:
- A requirement for students to post before seeing replies
- Availability and due dates
- Whether the board will be graded or ungraded
- Anonymity for ungraded discussions only
- Add to the student to-do list calendar for ungraded discussions only
- Peer reviews for graded discussions only
You can limit the visibility of the discussion to specific sections or by group. Group discussion boards allow group members to view and reply to one another only, not the full class.
Using Discussions
In the Discussions section, you can view a list of all discussion boards within your course, publish them, or subscribe to them. Pinned boards appear at the top, and the active and closed boards appear underneath.
Adjust general settings by clicking on the gear icon in the top right corner. This allows you to manually mark replies as read and adjust student settings, such as creating boards or editing their replies.
Click on a discussion board name to view the discussion. There are various options for searching, sorting, and adjusting your viewing preferences for threaded replies. To make edits or add a rubric, click the three dots on the right side of your initial post.
To access group discussions, click the group icon:
To reply to a post, click Reply under the post. The Rich Content Editor will appear. If you want to reply to a specific user, you can quote another user by clicking the three dots to the right of their post. You can also tag a user by using @ to notify them. When finished, click Reply to post your response.
Additional Resources
Getting Help
Please contact your Local Support Provider or submit a request to canvas@pobox.upenn.edu.