[Discussions] Subject Lines for Discussions

[snugent]

I created a similar suggestion about six months ago. I figured I would try again since there is renewed interest in making discussions more user friendly.

Add more distinction between discussion forum posts to distinguish them from each other.

So here is what I think subject lines would do for discussions.

• Instructors and students could at glance see what threads interest them for further viewing.
• Adds distinction between threads
• Makes the discussion topic more organized

[Renee_Carney]

  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...

[audrey_crawford]

It's pretty disappointing that the format of discussions is outside of scope right now. We are constantly reminded about how important peer-to-peer discussions are in online classes. The current format is discouraging.

[Jeff_F]

I've been using the current format for two years and it is working quite well in my opinion.  Once I reworked my process and I had a much better outlook.  Oh, and as I previously noted, the redundant response titles aren't being missed one single bit.  Not one iota, not even a dot.

Of course, I retain my not so secret pet peeves to include the lack of differentiation between instructor and student posts (can we please have a star or emphasized avatar next to instructor names?) which is quite an issue in MOOCs with multiple instructors.

[druker_stephen]

This is a much needed improvement for Canvas. I hope to see it in the future. Other improvements that are need are:

• discussions with multiple topic areas.
• an auto-generated "reply to" line when students respond to a post (on long threads it gets difficult to see who is talking to whom).

I think the fact that some people see this as un-needed has more to do with the type of discussion assignments they use and how they are graded. If you have a very focused discussion prompt and everyone is replying to the same prompt than often times no subject line is needed. If you have a more varied prompt where students can choose among options than a subject line becomes very important to keeping the discussion organized.

In the meantime, in case anyone is interested, I handle a lack of both these things by having students include them at the beginning of their posts. So far it seems to be working. Here's an example of the kind of instructions I include:

How To Post. At the beginning of your post you should include the information in the chart below before the body of your post (each of these is explained below the chart). This will keep our discussion area easier to navigate for everyone. If your post does not include this information, it may not be graded.

	New Post	Reply to a Previous Post*
What to inclue	TOPIC: TITLE:	TOPIC: TITLE: REPLY TO: _________
Example	TOPIC: Chapter 1 (General) TITLE: Longevity and the Psychosocial Approach FOR GRADING: YES	TOPIC: Chapter 1 (Focused) TITLE: Resilience and Community Support FOR GRADING: YES REPLY TO: Maria Xavier

* When you are replying to a post, simply copy the topic and title from the post you are replying to.

[peeksas]

It could be that people are simply using it differently than you and what works for you does not work for many others. As you can see from my screen shot, my students create their own threads and then students can go into those threads (if the subject line interests them) and chime in with or without the same subject line of the original poster. Since my students are required to make 2 original posts and 5 replies, it is literally cringeworthy the discussion board capability of Canvas compared to other learning platforms. Notice that nothing has changed in a year and a half for a feature that every other learning platform has.

[SHEBENE]

This is a great one. We've often lamented about the lack of a subject line for postings. Telling students to make their first sentence more of a title only helps a little. This is overdue IMHO. Thanks for reproposing it snugent‌

[cholling]

Yesterday I read an article (Pelz, B. (2004). (My) three principles of effective online pedagogy. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 8(3), 33-46.) that yesterday's Higher Ed newsroom linked to. One of the things that caught my attention was the author's guidelines to his students that subject lines count for something. He used criteria such as: they can be no more than 10 words and must summarize the main point of the comment being made. These two points require that the author demonstrates a clear understanding of the comments he/she is presenting, and it allows the readers to begin to form an idea in their heads of what the essence is of what they will be reading.

I had never much considered subject lines in discussions, although I attend to them in email, but I liked this approach.

[brent_scholar]

This is a necessity to aid in organizing forums. For instance in a general question forum how can we ask students to review them to see if their question topic has been addressed already if it is not easily identifiable? This includes good separation between threads. I am new to Canvas and not impressed with the discussion thread area thus far.

[Renee_Carney]

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

[langlet]

The lack of a subject line complicates my life, creating so many additional hours of work every semester because I just can't use Canvas for my class's discussion forum. I have to go someplace else where I must recreate the entire forum every semester. 

For me therefore, Canvas is worthless for purposes other than giving tests.