Anonymous Discussion Forums

[scottdennis]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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Idea:

Instructors can create discussions that allow for posts to be made anonymously

Use Cases:

As an instructor, I want to create discussions in which participation is anonymous. This would free my students to share their thoughts without worrying about judgement / criticism by their peers or me. They'd take risks they might not otherwise.

transferred from the old Community

Originally posted by: Lynn McCarty
Thank you especially for contributions by: Rob Ditto, Allison Pyle, Renee Carney, Robert Jones

[johnsonbria]

The link provide to understand what it means for product radar is broken. It goes to a whoops page.

[johnsonbria]

I agree, Marshall. This is a basic feature which many of systems allow and support.

[daniel_sze]

Dear all,

When I looked back at all the initial suggestions and the way that Canvas responded to this basic but very useful request back to 2015, I was surprised that this Anonymous Discussion Forum is still not be an routine option for Teacher to choose.

In our university, we have started to have students who have graduated with High Distinction from that course in previous year to volunteer as MENTORS to provide some assistance and constructive feedback in the Discussion Forums, however, the participation rate is still poor. An Anonymous survey then was created to seek why the students did not participate in this well-resourced Discussion Forum, and the answer is very clear -- The students prefer to ask questions in an anonymous environment. 

I hope that this option can be up in the Forum after the initial 2 years' original posts by many dedicated teachers around the world.

Cheers,

Daniel Sze

[doylem3]

Please add this feature. I will be using piaza for class discussions until it is added. 

[colleen_harmon]

Please avoid using rapidly flashing animations on web pages. 

[colleen_harmon]

Please prioritize the option to allow anonymous replies to Discussion threads in Canvas. There are many situations in which I'd like to poll students anonymously to get a clearer idea of their comprehension or responses. I find too many students are afraid to make mistakes, especially publicly, so they refrain from responding or limit their responses accordingly. 

The anonymous survey Quiz does not work as an anonymous Discussion. I tried it, and it's very clunky to use for this purpose. I will not use it again.

Please provide anonymous Discussion responses asap.

Thank you.

[rislis]

My apologies.

[a_craik]

Voted up! I completely see the value in this. After a year of having Canvas at our institution I've only seen limited success in the use of the native Discussions tool. The 'common sense' logic in why some students engage more in an anonymous setting is ratified by the research - see  @j_thorpe 's references above, or have a look at research on the net on use of classroom interaction tools (as I have been) and it's exactly the same story.

Having read the comments above, it seems that I need to explore Piazza rather than pinning any hopes on this being developed in Canvas anytime soon, which is a real shame but ho hum...

So, can any experienced Piazza users offer any advice as I start out? Does the LTI version work as you'd like it to?

Cheers

Adam

[cms_hickss]

My university requested this some time ago as well. It actually came from our College of Nursing and I believe Social Work as well, as those courses sometimes have guest users or want students to talk open and honestly about events in their lives that they might not share if their name is attached to the event (things from HIV to Aids to domestic abuse and rape).

We wanted the feature to be optional. Meaning the teacher would set the announcement to allow anonymous responses. This discussion, by default would then have to be optional and non-graded.

[daniel_sze]

Dear Adam

I do share your view and proposal of Anonymous Discussion Forums in CANVAS.

I think that may be CANVAS has been used primarily at Primary School and

High/Secondary Schools that the teachers actually want to see the identity

of participants clearly.

Now there are more Universities starting to use CANVAS. We do need to start

to gather voices together for Higher Education /University User Group. I

note that Blackboard system or other Learning Management systems have got

this Anonymous Discussion as standard, I do think that the CANVAS needs to

see that Higher Education has got different needs….

Merry X’mas to you!

Cheers

Daniel.