Discussions

Learning Intentions

Participants who complete this module will gain an understanding of creating and editing discussions in Canvas. 

 Success Criteria

Participants will know they are successful when they can:

• create and edit a discussion in Canvas. 
• assign a discussion to students.
• view the student discussions and responses.

 Discussions Overview

Task: Create a discussion and add it to one of your modules. 

Another way to assess student learning in Canvas is through discussions. Watch the following video to get an overview of Canvas discussions:

218 - Discussions Overview (Links to an external site.) from Instructure Community (Links to an external site.) on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

 Creating a Discussion

Complete the following steps to create a Canvas discussion:

1. In Course Navigation, click the Discussions link.
2. Click the Add Discussion button.
3. In the Title field [1], create a title for your discussion. Use the Rich Content Editor [2] to create content for your discussion. You can also add links, files, and images to the discussion using the content selector [3]. You can also add an attachment to your discussion by clicking the Choose File button [4].

Discussion Settings

Complete the following steps to choose the settings for a Canvas discussion:

1. By default, discussions are created as focused discussions. To create a threaded discussion, click the Allow threaded replies checkbox [1]. Learn more about focused and threaded discussionsLinks to an external site..
2. To require users to reply to the discussion before they can see any other replies, click the Users must post before seeing replies checkbox [2].
3. To enable a discussion podcast feedLinks to an external site., click the Enable podcast feed checkbox [3].
4. To create a graded discussion, click the Graded checkbox [4]. You can assign graded discussions to individual students and sectionsLinks to an external site. and assign graded discussions to groupsLinks to an external site.. Graded discussions can be scored using SpeedGrader.
5. To allow students to like discussion repliesLinks to an external site., click the Allow liking checkbox [5].
6. To make the discussion be a group discussionLinks to an external site., click the This is a Group Discussion checkbox [6].
7. To make your discussion available on a specific date or during a specific date range, enter the dates in the Available From and Until fields [7], or click the calendar icons to select dates. Note that these fields only apply for non-graded discussions; If you create a graded discussion, these date fields do not apply.

Publishing

If you are ready to publish your discussion, click the Save & Publish button [1]. If you want to create a draft of your discussion and publish it later, click the Save button [2]. Once published, your students can post to the discussion!