Download Discussions In Canvas

Lee, L., Krieger, J. M., & Zolkover, A. D. (2021, October 28). Change the prompt, not the tool: Developing effective discussions. Educause. -conference/2021/agenda/change-the-prompt-not-the-tool-developing-effective-discussions

A new design for Discussions has recently been enabled in Canvas. Among the features of the redesigned Canvas Discussions are the ability to create anonymous discussions and the ability to report inappropriate or abusive discussion comments. In this post, we will look at how you can use these new functions within your Canvas course.

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Anonymous discussions are well suited to potentially sensitive topics where students may not wish to be identified publicly. They can also be used as a mechanism for soliciting anonymous student feedback on various aspects of your course.

Another new feature offered by the redesigned Discussions is an option to report discussion replies that are inappropriate, offensive, or abusive. This option may be used with a discussion of any type, but it is especially important to be aware of it if your discussion is partially or fully anonymous. Anonymous discussions carry the attendant risk of harassment, trolling, and other inappropriate behaviors, and the Report Reply function can be a good defense against such behaviors.

The Discussions tool allows the instructor to create discussion topics for students to contribute to in an asynchronous manner outside of class time. Instructors can use discussions as a way of encouraging students to think about and discuss topics in preparation for the in-class discussion, or they can be used to encourage collaborative reflection on a topic after it is presented in class.

The asynchronous environment can also be beneficial to students who are less likely to participate in live, real-time discussions (students who are typically more shy or prefer to have time to think and carefully craft responses). The asynchronous aspect of the Discussions tool also provides a platform where all students can share their opinions, which is typically not feasible with in-class discussion due to time constraints.

Group Discussions allow instructors to create a single discussion topic, which is automatically duplicated to provide one separate version of the topic for each group within the Group Set. For instructors and TAs who want to review the discussions, they will go to the Discussions tool and click on the group discussion topic.

It need not be this way, however. With thought and preparation, online discussions can be just as active, vibrant, and thoughtful as the best in-class discussions. In this article you will find some helpful tips for crafting Canvas online discussions that will keep students engaged and help them make substantive, meaningful contributions to the ongoing flow of debate.

The Discussions tool allows for online discussions in your Canvas course. Discussions can be set to be assessable (and seamlessly integrate with the Canvas Gradebook)or simply serve as a forum for topical and current events. They can also be created within student groups.

The Discussions Index page, available from the Discussions link in the Course Navigation menu, has global settings at the top of the page (see [1] in the image below), followed by the Discussion groups [2]. Individual discussions are nested within each Discussion group [3].

The discussion tool provides both focused discussions and threaded discussions. Focused discussions are typically used in situations where the goal is for students to respond to a prompt generated by the instructor. Threaded discussions are used where the goal is to encourage more student to student interaction.

Discussion Tips and Strategies: This excellent guide by the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning provides tips for instructors on effective teaching strategies to use when incorporating discussions in their course.

The Canvas Groups tool has a variety of applications (some better than others). One of the most useful enables you to transform a single Canvas Discussion into a small group discussion experience. Small groups can help with student engagement in online discussions. If you have joined or merged course shells and you use Canvas Discussions, this is an essential component in ensuring that your course complies with FERPA by restricting students from interacting with peers in other sections.

Note that the automatic/random group tools will not work until students have been added to your course. You can create the group set and follow the steps below to use it with discussions, but you will have to come back and add students.

Have you ever been a student in an online course in which discussion forums were used as a crucial component of the course? Think about your learning experiences in those courses. I'm sure you can identify instances in which discussions were effective, but you are more likely to identify poor experiences with discussions.

Let's take a look at a few recommendations for improving the effectiveness of using the discussion board as a teaching and learning tool, as well as improving the overall quality of the types of discussions that take place within them.

Discussions includes graded conversations with students or ungraded discussions. This can be customised for each individual student. A student can submit their work before they see their peers work and are also able to edit and delete posts. You can subscribe to individual discussions and be notified if a new post is made.

Use the Canvas Discussions tool to create, facilitate, and contribute to online discussions involving your entire class or smaller groups. A tool-level setting allows you to determine whether students can create new topics, delete their own posts, or attach files to discussion posts. Discussion topics in Canvas can be either graded or ungraded, and the format can be focused or threaded. Focused discussions allow for two levels of nesting, the original post and subsequent replies, and are best suited to short-lived discussions. The threaded format, which is designed for more extended interactions, supports replies within replies with unlimited nesting.

Institutions using Harmonize in Canvas have seen significant increases in student engagement, comprehension, participation, and the quality of interactions. For example, when Meridian Community College started using Harmonize to power online course discussions in Canvas, the institution saw a 56% increase in student engagement. Harmonize is purposefully built to make online discussions easy, inclusive, and socially engaging -- all of which lead to more student participation.

In addition to setting clear expectations for students, instructors using Harmonize in Canvas have been able to incorporate a wider range of discussion and collaboration activities. Instructors can limit discussions by section or groups, break students out into discussion groups by topic, and support student-facilitated discussions.

The technology an institution employs to facilitate online course discussions must also be easy to use. Tools with user-friendly designs are naturally easier to learn; they also allow instructors and students to complete tasks quickly and offer an intuitive navigation -- to even a first-time user.

Getting students to participate in online course discussions means meeting them where they are. Copiah-Lincoln Community College has found success in using emotion-based and real-world applicable discussion prompts that speak to their students.

When instructors at Brown University started using Harmonize to evaluate student participation in online discussions, it drastically reduced many of the time-consuming tasks often involved with assessing student work and providing feedback.

Similarly, at Fayetteville State University, instructors felt better equipped to evaluate participation in their online course discussions. With at-a-glance student participation dashboards, as well as integrated auto-grading and plagiarism detection, instructors saved valuable time -- easily viewing and assessing student activity. The streamlined grading experience allowed instructors to focus their energy on instruction rather than course discussion management. After one term of use, a survey of instructors showed that:

Finally, one of the most important keys to improving student participation in online course discussions is being able to track engagement. With Engagement Insights in Harmonize, you can see who, how, and when students are participating in their courses without ever leaving Canvas.

When instructors set up graded group discussions in Canvas, it creates both individual group discussions and a course-level discussion. If a student is not added to a group (as may happen with groups created near the beginning of a term), they may inadvertently post to the course-level discussion and prevent their responses from showing in SpeedGrader. This article will clarify Canvas's intended behavior regarding this issue and provide a workaround to ensure accurate grading in SpeedGrader.

While the Canvas behavior regarding graded group discussions and SpeedGrader is unintuitive, it has been confirmed as intended behavior by Canvas Support. Utilizing the provided workaround can help ensure that all student responses are accessible and gradable through SpeedGrader.

Canvas makes it easy to create discussion, and each discussion has the option to be either graded or ungraded. Canvas has created a step-by-step guide that walks through creating graded and ungraded discussions. To further explore graded discussions, as well as other types of graded Canvas assessments, visit the E-Campus How-To: Create Graded Assessments in Canvas guide.

Take some time to consider if your discussion boards are based on quality or quantity. A few in-depth discussions far outweigh multiple check-in discussions. To help avoid these check-in-type discussion boards with dry content recaps and simple agreement answers, ask students open-ended questions that task them with solving problems, investigating related questions, and making predictions. See some examples below: ff782bc1db