[Discussions] Create option to change from group to whole class
Problem (submitted on behalf of an instructor): Once students have begun replying to a discussion, if it is set as a group discussion, changes to student groups or the group set to which the discussion is assigned are not reflected in the discussion, but only apply to future discussions. If the discussion was intended to be a whole-class discussion, it is not possible to change its status from group to whole-class once students have begun replying. This is problematic to an instructor of ours because groups may need to change for various reasons, such as if groups have issues or students add/drop the course while a discussion is active. Additionally, it may become clear during the course of a discussion that students need to do individual work instead of group work (or vice versa), but currently, there is no easy way to update the discussion if a professor arrives at such a decision.
Proposed solution: allow for a change of group sets and/or a change of group status mid-discussion. (Perhaps this could come with a large warning, stating that if the group set is changed or the discussion is changed from group to whole-class (or vice versa), student work will be lost and cannot be recovered, as I imagine it would be technically difficult to retain student replies when changing discussion status from group to whole-class (or vice versa). If it would be possible to regain the student work via /undelete, for example, or to revert back to a previous iteration of the discussion via discussion history, that would definitely be great, too, as I can envision instructors changing this setting by mistake and wanting to switch back.) The why that the instructor of ours proposed is to allow for professors to change their minds if they determine that students need to switch from group work to individual work (or vice versa). Thank you for considering this idea!
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