Can you reply privately to individual student posts in a discussion forum? (Outside of Speedgrader comments)

[AaronTillman]

In other LMS's I've used, I've been able to reply privately to individual student posts (even if the initial discussion posts are public to students in the class). Private replies do not seem to be available with Canvas discussion forums. This is disappointing, and I hope it's a feature/option that gets added.  Open to suggestions in the meantime. 

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @AaronTillman,

I can at least confirm there is no "private reply" option in Canvas discussions right now.  In general, SpeedGrader is really the best avenue to provide feedback at this time, in my opinion.  The students will be used to seeing that feedback from other assignments and form other courses, rather than having feedback spread out across a ton of different areas.  I agree it's definitely not as convenient to give feedback via SpeedGrader for a discussion if you're looking to do quick comments to a bunch of students, but might just have to live with that.  Perhaps someone else here will offer some workarounds that I have not thought of yet though.

Hope this helps a bit!

-Chris