Using discussions is a great way to provide asynchronous conversation between students. They are a great way to build your online community, assess student understanding of course material, create a private journal or blog space, and collect learner feedback.
There are three elements of Discussions:
- Forum: This is required for discussions and acts as containers, or folders, for different conversations in the course. Nothing can be written at the Forum level.
- Topic: This provides instructions and is where the conversation lives. A Topic can inherit settings from a Forum or can be set independently.
- Thread/Reply: This is the conversation in action. Learners create threads based on the topics and interact with the materials, peers, and instructor.
Instructions
Create a Discussion Forum
- Select the course in which you would like to create a Discussion Forum. On that course homepage, click on Course Tools then Course Admin.
- On the Course Administration page, click on Discussions.
- On the Discussions page, click on the New drop-down, then click on New Forum.
- Enter the title of the new forum and select if you want to create a topic with the same title. Add a description to the forum and select the desired options. Once complete click Save and Close.\
- The new Forum will now appear on the Discussions page.
Create a Discussion Topic
- After creating a new forum (instructions above) you can easily add a topic by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the forum name and then clicking Add Topic.
- Alternatively, Select the course in which you would like to create a discussion. On that course homepage, click on Content.
- Once on the content page, select the module in the left column to which you want to add a Discussion. Click on Upload/Create, then in the drop-down, select New Discussion.
- On the New Topic page enter the title of the topic.
- When creating a topic this way, a Forum is automatically created with that topic title, but you also have the option to add it to an existing forum or create a new forum with a different name. Click Change Forum, then select if you want to create a new forum for the topic or add it to an existing forum. Click Apply Changes.
- Select if the Discussion Topic will appear in the gradebook and, if so, how many points it is worth. Add a topic description. If you want the topic to be immediately available to students, be sure to click the eye toggle that says hidden and when ready click Save and Close.
- The Discussion Topic is now created. Click Start a New Thread to start a conversation with your students.
