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Discussions in Canvas

Discussions are threaded conversations on a single topic. They are asynchronous, which means participants do not have to be online at the same time, making them an especially flexible communication tool. You can use Discussions for communication and for assessment.

The video below provides a basic overview of Discussions.

516 - Discussions Overview from Instructure Canvas Community on Vimeo.

Using Discussions in Your Teaching

  • Have students introduce themselves to the class at the beginning of a semester.
  • Create a Q&A thread for the class and ask students to post questions instead of contacting you by email. You can even encourage students to respond to each other in this thread rather than waiting for you to reply.
  • Create a “water cooler” thread for students to chat about topics unrelated to the class. While this is not teaching per se, it allows students to connect with each other and helps build social presence in the course.
  • Ask students to use the media tools in the Rich Content Editor to post their responses. For learners who are more comfortable speaking than writing, this provides a means for them to respond more fluently. In a language course, this allows you to assess students’ pronunciation, grammar, etc.
  • Have students work through a case or problem.
  • Embed a media prompt (a diagram, video, etc.) for students to respond to.
  • Students can create their own discussions within Canvas Groups, if they wish to use the discussion for communication and collaboration.

Providing Discussion Guidelines and/or Expectations

In your syllabus or on an introductory page in the Modules area, be sure to define exactly what you expect from students when posting to discussions. This can include general netiquette information, use of full sentences, citing sources, and specific information on how discussions will be assessed (include quantity and quality of posts).

Considerations for Using Canvas Discussions

  • The option for “threaded discussion” is not selected by default. When you create your discussion, you are strongly encouraged to select this option to make the conversations easier for everyone to follow.
  • You can use the Rich Content Editor in Canvas to format the text of your discussion prompt, add links (to other parts of the Canvas site or to other webpages), and embed videos.
  • If a discussion is graded, you can review student responses in SpeedGrader. When you select a student in SpeedGrader, you will see all of that student’s posts to the discussion, which is helpful if you require students to reply to their classmates in addition to posting their own responses to the prompt.
  • You can attach a rubric to a graded discussion or require peer review for discussion responses.

Using Discussions with Groups

  • In a large class, consider breaking students into smaller groups and then having them respond to discussion prompts in their small groups.
  • Discussions in Groups allow for collaboration on projects.

Learn more
How do I use the Discussions Index Page?

Adapted from “Discussions in Canvas” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.