Discussions let you conduct online conversations with your students on course-related subjects.

• The basic elements are the title, topic, comments, and replies.
• Graded discussions let you assign a grade based on each student's participation in the discussion.
• Discussions can be attached to the course or to an individual lesson.

Who can start a discussion?

Different kinds of users can create discussions:

• Course faculty and teaching assistants: Faculty and TA's listed for the course have full access to all discussions, settings, permissions, and grading requirements (for graded discussions).
• Academic Admins and Registrars: Same access as above groups.
• Students and auditors: Student who are enrolled or auditing can start discussions; their options are limited to setting the discussion title and topic. You can change any settings on any discussion, including changing it to a graded discussion.

Discussions

The Discussions tab displays all of the course's discussions, including:

• Available, future, closed, and deleted discussions
• Graded and non-graded discussions
• Draft and published discussions
• Discussions attached to lessons

This lets you create a new, non-graded discussion that is attached to the lesson. You can also add a graded discussion to the lesson.

Start by going to Lessons and clicking a Lesson title.

To add a new discussion:

1. Click add a discussion.
2. Adding a new discussion here works exactly like adding a new discussion in the Discussions view. See above for details.
3. You can add multiple discussions to a lesson. Just click add next to Discussions and repeat the above steps.
4. You can later link a lesson discussion to an assignment and so turn it into a graded discussion.

To add a graded discussion:

1. Click add an assignment.
2. Select one of your discussion-type assignments from the drop-down and Save.
3. When you do this, the assignment will show in the Assignments panel, and the associated discussion will show in the Discussions panel.

There are three ways to create new discussions in your course

• Clicking Add a course discussion in the Discussions view (see below)
• Adding a discussion-type assignment
• Adding a new discussion in a course lesson

Discussions

This lets you create a non-graded discussion that is attached to the course. If need be, you can later connect it to an assignment or a lesson.

1. Click Add a Course Discussion.
2. Enter the discussion title. The title should be a brief description of what you want the discussion to focus on.
3. Enter the discussion topic. The topic can be as detailed and lengthy as you wish. You can use text formatting in the topic.
4. Attach an optional file.
5. Check whether this discussion is published or not. Students cannot participate in a discussion until it is published.
6. Enter a date for when this discussion will first be available.
7. Choose how to close the discussion to comment:
   • Yes means this discussion is now closed to new comments/replies.
   • No means this discussion is now open to new comments/replies.
   • Date lets you set the end date/time, at which time the discussion will automatically be closed to new comments/replies.
8. Check whether to allow Peer Rating.
9. Check whether to require a student to submit a post before being able to see other students' comments.
10. Enter the maximum number of comments and/or replies that an individual student can make in a discussion.
11. When you're done, click Save.

Now that you've created this discussion, it will show up either under current or future discussions. It is not graded, but you can link it to a discussion-type assignment later on.

Discussion Assignments

This lets you create a graded discussion that is attached to the course. If need be, you can later connect it to a lesson.

1. Go to the course Assignments view.
2. Click Add an assignment.
3. Enter the assignment details.
4. When you get to the Type field, choose Discussion.
5. A new drop-down will appear, letting you choose either to create a New discussion or to select from any existing (non-graded) discussions.
   • If you create a new discussion, the discussion will have the same name as you give the assignment.
   • If you choose an existing discussion, the assignment name will change to the discussion name.
6. When you're done, click Save.

Graded assignments give you lots of options for grading requirements and other details. To set those up, go to the discussion assignment's page.