This guide pertains to Ultra Course View.
If your course is in Original Course View, see the Original Course View tutorial collection.
Creating Purposeful Discussions
Class discussions provide a communication channel to supplement classroom conversations, are a great way to build community, provide social and peer learning as well as provide students with the opportunity to practice collaboration skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving. To be highly effective, Discussions start with well-crafted questions. To learn more about how to create purposeful discussion prompts, see How to Write Effective Discussion Questions. To learn how to build discussion forums in a course see Create a Discussion tutorial. Discussions also provide insightful Analytics. To learn more see, Analytics in Discussions tutorial.
Discussion Tab Overview
Discussion Forum Overview
Within a discussion forum, tabs provided give instructors access to additional action areas for the forum. these tabs are:
Discussion (default landing area upon clicking into a forum)
Student Activity
Grades & Participation (note: The Grading & Participation tap appears only when the discussion is marked for grading.)
The Discussion Tab is where the prompt, student responses to the prompt, and discussion settings are provided.
A. Statistical data provided for the student posts made to the forum. If grading had been started for the forum, the average discussion grade earned would display.
B. Participation & Access Rates: The left percentage indicates the percent of students in the class that have participated in the forum to date. The right percentage indicates the percent of students in the class that opened the discussion forum. In this case, all students who accessed the forum, posted a response to it.
C. This area shows the student(s) who have not yet participated in the forum. By clicking the envelop icon, the instructor can send a message to the student(s) regarding their lack of partticipation.
D. The bottom area shows the posts that received the most responses, with the highest number of responses listed at the top.
E. The right Top Participants panel shows the students who participated the most in the forum.
The Grading & Participation tap appears only when the discussion is marked for grading
A. Statistical data showing number of students who participated in the forum to date, number of posts to grade, and number of grades to post.
B. Filtering options to search for a student or sort by either the student's status (All, No Entry, or Entry Made) or by Grading Status (All, Needs Grading, Needs Posting, Nothing To Grade, Completed)
C. List of all students in the class showing the status of entry made to the forum, grading status for each, and grade earned.
D. Clicking the (3) dots allows the instructor to set up or edit an exception for the student to allow for completion of the forum after the due date.
