[Discussions] Download discussion board posts

[jvolkman]

We would like to be able to download all of the discussion board posts from our course this semester for faculty analysis. We would also like students to be able to download and/or view all of their posts to review at the end of the semester in one place. This would create a type of e-portfolio for each student based on their work during the semester.

[ofelia_mangen]

One this to look out for with this method is the overlay of certain page elements, including discussion post actions and the chat window (if/when enabled in the course site).

I've found a workaround by using a browser extension that takes a screenshot of the entire webpage (vs. PDF export that will break it into pages; hence the repeat and overlay of certain page elements/windows). Some of these browser extensions will also give you different options for export (png, pdf, etc.). I export to PDF and run OCR so the text is accessible. 

[carol_patrie]

Being able to download  the discussions would be a huge help. 

[mwe_sci]

     Eric and Ofelia, I appreciate your suggestions. There are other ways, too, such as selecting, copying, and pasting the entire discussion, although there are a number of formatting problems that need management with this approach (at least there are no text mistakes, as would be the case in OCR methods that convert images).
     However, all of these methods using bailing wire and duct tape to repair a poorly designed discussion tool are a great waste of teacher time when multiplied by every instructor that uses one of these methods. Add to that the instructor time given to years of begging in these forums and hundreds of votes for this obviously necessary improvement and one might just throw their hands up and respond, "I don't think there's anybody back there."

[johast]

Ive found years worth of discussions and comments on this topic but yet it has still not be implemented. I would use this across all of my classes. It is integral to user experience - how is this not a priority? 

[mwe_sci]

     Yes, Jocelyn, that's the question – how is this not a priority? And wouldn't it be nice if our students were able to download an entire discussion as well, in various formats and arrangements, for many of the same reasons we instructors want these necessary capabilities? So, multiply the efforts of our students to work around these missing discussion-tool components and add them to our own efforts in the calculation of unnecessarily wasted time.
     With these improvements, our students could then work on their discussion entries more effectively offline, analyzing and responding to the entries of the classmates that interest them. Since they can't take notes or write drafts within a Canvas discussion (among other failings of the Canvas discussion environment), the need for this kind of improvement seems so basic and obvious. I would think Canvas techs would be all over this, providing discussion-tool upgrades that would surpass efforts by Blackboard and other competing LMS providers.

[paul_greenberg]

I would love to download all posts from all discussions in all classes I teach and to do this as needed for all of the classes that I supervise for others.  Copy/paste, page by page, class by class is a waste of time.  Canvas must be able to pull the data so this would be very useful for users.  Thanks and please implement!!  Most people don't even know to ask about this or how to find the voting pages, but if Canvas were to poll people, I expect most would want it.

The current score is 378 for and  22 against.  94.5% of respondents want this feature!!

[abigail_smith_2]

At our institution, courses are deleted after 2 years.  But instructors often need a record of student work, for when they are asked to write references, which can happen more than 2 years after the actual course.  A way to quickly download all student work in a course, including discussion posts, would be excellent.  It would also help with capstone courses, portfolios, and other project-based assignments where students or instructors need to reference past work.

[curtain]

good use case examples

[shannon_tomlins]

I think that we need to be able to download discussion boards just like we can with other assignments to help with grading. There are times when I can't be connected to the internet but would like to be able to grade discussion boards, such as when I am riding in a car or on a train. Even though internet connections are available in most places, there are times when you cannot connect for one reason or another yet grading still needs to get done. 

[paul_greenberg]

These scripts shown on the following website seem like the fastest way to grab all of the discussion posts from all of the discussion forums in a class, all at once.  http://www.dartmouth.edu/~breid/userscripts/ 

This person's scripts are discussed in a different Canvas question/answer forum on this same topic and while you need to install "tampermonkey" into your browser, once that is installed the script "Canvas-Discussions-Discussions-Get_Entries.user.js" seems to work   "Gets discussion data. Activation button appears toward bottom of Discussion page. v1.1" (from the Dartmouth page listed above).

It dumps everything into an excel spreadsheet and the text is all there.  The word counts don't seem to be correct, but you will have everything anyone has written.  It would be best if Canvas just wrote this as an option because who knows how long those scripts will work.