Is there a way to hide a discussion once it's over?

[keefern]

I have a faculty member who will be using some of the information in a discussion activity on a test, and he would like to make sure the students can't just open another window on the test and copy and paste. He does not want to use proctoring. 

Does anyone know if there is a way to hide it about which I'm just unaware? He cannot unpublish the discussion.

Thanks in advance.

[Chris_Hofer]

@keefern ...

According to this Guide, discussion topics cannot be unpublished once there have been student submissions.  See the section on "Unpublish Discussion".

How do I publish or unpublish a discussion as an i... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

While I understand the use case that you have detailed, it certainly could be possible that students have taken screenshots of a given discussion topic well in advance of the instructor wanting to hide the topic so that they cannot see it any more.  So, although it may be a remote possibility, there is still a chance that a student could have captured the conversation in some way.

[keefern]

 Hi Chris - Thanks for your reply. As I mentioned in my note, we know we cannot unpublish. We were hoping to find a different way to hide the material.

But I guess there is no other way to hide the material after it's been posted, just like in the Chat.

I will make that as a suggestion to the developers as these situations really can cause problems with FERPA. 

[JessicaDeanSVC]

While it is a bit of a workaround, and still does not truly remove the content, you may consider deleting any links to the discussion, such as in the syllabus or modules, and hiding the Discussion tab in the course navigation. Students could easily still go to their browser history and go to the direct link to the page, but this could help slow that down. 

My other suggestion would be to delete the discussion, and then after the exam, undelete it if needed. Not the same as hiding it, but could be an acceptable workaround if the instructor feels comfortable with it. Lots of concerns with that method though, like if the discussion has any grades associated with it or it was a prereq for continuing through a module. 

I'm sure you already thought of these/similar approaches, but just wanted to share how I would approach this knowing the content can't just be unpublished 😊

[keefern]

Thanks, Jessica. 

I hadn't considered suggesting set up in the future to allow for hiding the discussion tab and then linking to the individual ones. While it's not going to work for this instance, I'll get with that faculty member and give him that option.