Assignment Discussion Boards
An assignment can have a discussion board where you and your students ask questions and talk about the work.
Turning the Board On or Off
The board is off for new assignments. To turn it on:
- Open the assignment's ⋮ menu and choose Edit Assignment.
- Go to the Collaboration tab.
- Turn on Enable Discussion Board.
On the same tab you can set the Moderation Level (or keep Use school default) and turn on Enable Private Teacher-Student Messages.
Discussion Thread assignments always have the board on.
Your school can turn student discussions off for all assignments. The switch then shows Disabled by school settings.
Opening the Board
On the Assignments page, click Discussion on the assignment card. The board opens in a side panel. A badge shows unread messages.
If private messages are on, the panel has two parts: Discussion for the whole class and Private Messages for one-to-one messages with students.
Posting
Type in the box (Type a message...) and click the send button, or press Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on Mac). You can use simple formatting such as bold, italic and links.
Each comment has Reply, Edit and Delete. Replies go one level deep. Edited comments show (edited) and keep an edit history.
Moderating
- As the teacher, you can edit or delete any comment on the board.
- Deleted comments show as deleted to students. You can still see the original text.
- The moderation level filters messages before they are posted. A student whose message is blocked keeps their text and can revise it.
- When a message is flagged for safety, you get a Safety Alert notification.
Discussion Thread Assignments
For a Discussion Thread assignment, each student writes a first post, then replies to classmates. Students cannot see classmates' posts until they post their own. You set the Post Deadline, the Reply Deadline and Expected Replies when you create the assignment. After the deadline, students can still read the thread but cannot post.
Their posts appear on the submissions page like other work, with typing pattern analysis for each post.
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