[Discussions] Discussion Post Revision History

[james_dannibale]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas LMS

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There should be a revision history for discussion posts for many reasons.

• If a student says something against the school behavior standards but then edits it, we need a record of what was said.
• If we use "must post before seeing replies" sometimes students will post a blank space to see the replies and then edit their response. Yes we see that editing was done, but we don't know that the blank space thing happened.
• As much as we'd like to think this would never happen, right now a teacher can edit a student's post to be a crappy post and then assign a low grade. The student has no record of what the original post said when making a grade appeal.

I feel like this one's a no-brainer and ought to be fixed ASAP. 

[Steven_S]

In the meantime the ability to edit discussion posts is a feature that I turn off.  In the settings tab, scroll down to "more options" and you can uncheck "Let students edit or delete their own discussion posts."

[CMWilson]

There should be a discussion post history similar to how there is a page history. Instructor's should be able to see the history of edited posts made by students. Many faculty have the problem with students posting their initial post of a word or less and then going back and changing that to a real post, but the faculty member has no way to track that behavior without reworking how the discussion board works. Allowing the history would allow the instructor to see the original post and the changes the student made. When necessary, the instructor can use this as documentation. When edit is used as intended, no harm, no foul.

[scott_lockhart]

@Steven_S is that still an option (to not allow students to edit their post)? I don't see it on my end. Thank you.

[Steven_S]

You have to select more options at the bottom of the course settings page below the description text box, and then the option should be visible.  In my courses it is the 4th of 8 options that appear.  If it is not there, your canvas admin might have done something to block the choice. 

[scott_lockhart]

Thank you for that. Really appreciate it.

[paulamiranda]

I support this feature idea because it allows users the flexibility to edit their own posts, while giving the instructor the ability to review a posts version history, in case there are concerns about academic integrity/honor code violations. 

Right now, we must encourage faculty to enable a setting that prevents students from editing their own posts, but what if there is a reasonable need for a student to do so, especially in the context of a discussion forum where what we share will be available for others to read, which may require us to further edit and refine it.

[akinsey]

Definitely see the value in this--for all the reasons listed above. We want to provide students what they need to succeed, but we also need to be able to see if there are issues that need addressing at an institutional level.

[StevieLewis]

 I noticed I misspelled a word in a reply on a discussion board and want to correct it, is it going to affect my status? It was due tonight at 8 pm in which it was turned in on time. However, if I go in and edit that issue is going to turn my assignment status to late??

[Denham]

besides the student part of this - if an academic is using a discussion INSTEAD of a page to deliver content (some of the canvas training pages do this if they want discussion related to content etc) then it's basically being used as a discussion enabled page, so having the full history that you have on page would be important.

besides as a discussion enabled page, you may also use a discussion in place of a page if you need to conditionally release the content (eg this is relevant to one class but different content to another - this has cropped up in the case of when there was a public holiday that impacted 1 class, but not the other, so from after the public holiday the 2 classes were slightly out of sync, where the 2nd class covered a little bit more for a couple of weeks to catch up)  because you cannot do conditional release on a page (based on sections/group membership, or date etc).