Senast reviderad: 2022-01-27

Using Discussions for submissions

If you want your students to hand in a text or media that will be visible to everyone taking the course, not only teachers, you can create a Discussion. This will give the students the possibility to see what their fellow students have submitted so that they have an opportunity for further learning, ask questions or give feedback. It may be an important part of the learning process to reflect on and review what other students have submitted. Discussions shouldn't be confused with Peer reviews (a feature that is available when creating an assignment and lets a students give feedback on a certain number of assignments).

Settings in Discussions

Please check the module CREATE MEETING PLACES to learn how to create a Discussion. Below you can see how the settings should look if the Discussion should be graded:

Graded discussion.

Check the box Graded. This will make the Discussion visible in the overview when you click on Grades.
State how many available points there are for the discussion, these later show up in Grades.
Choose how the grading should appear for the students. (We recommend the easiest setting which is 1 point and Display grade as Complete/Incomplete).

Further down, when editing the Discussion, you will find due dates and dates for when the discussion will be closed for further post. Don't forget to Save and publish!

TIPS! Group discussions with an introduction from the teacher is a practical way to pose the same questions to several groups at the same time.

Grading a Discussion

Discussions that are set for grading will appear in the overview. Click on Grades in the course menu to reach the list of all your students.

Graded discussion gradebook.

Here you can easily follow who has participated in the Discussion. Click on SpeedGrader to see every student's post and grade these. Just as with Assignments you may write a comment to every student.

How does it appear for the student?

Graded discussion student view.

Discussions look the same for students as they do for teachers: there is an introductory text written by the discussion starter, and a box to leave a reply. If it is a graded discussion, this will be prompted with a box above the discussion.

Graded discussions will also appear at other places in Canvas, for instance among Assignments and the list with assignments at the bottom of Syllabus.