Making group discussions visible to the entire class

[jenniferbell]

I have an instructor that splits her class into groups and has them discuss among themselves. She wants to know if there is a way that, after the discussion has taken place, she can open the group discussions up where everyone in the class can see each group's board and responses. I initially thought we could accomplish this by unchecking "This is a Group Discussion" in edit mode, but once there are replies you cannot do that.

Does anyone have an idea of how we can accomplish this without too much work on the instructor's part?

[kona · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately there isn't a way to open a group discussion up for the whole class. 😞

As for a way to do this... right off the top of my head I can't think of a good way other than having individual discussions for each group, use differentiate tool, and then after it's over open them up to everyone in the class to view and/or comment. 

[kona · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately there isn't a way to open a group discussion up for the whole class. 😞

As for a way to do this... right off the top of my head I can't think of a good way other than having individual discussions for each group, use differentiate tool, and then after it's over open them up to everyone in the class to view and/or comment. 

[jenniferbell]

Thanks for your help! I think I may leave this question open a little while longer to see if anyone else has accomplished this in different ways.

[tbunag · Accepted solution]

Could you simply print the discussion to a PDF format and share it with the whole class?  This could work if your discussions are text-based, versus video discussion posts.  Would that meet your instructor's needs?

[jenniferbell]

That might be a good, easy way to accomplish this. Thanks for the idea!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there,  @jenniferbell ‌...

I thought that I would check in with you because it's been about two months since there's been any new activity in this particular discussion topic.  It looks like  @kona ‌ and  @tbunag ‌ have given you a couple suggestions here.  Would you mind sharing with us what you ended up doing?  Or, are you still looking for some ideas yet?  Did one of the above replies help to answer your question?  If so, please go ahead and mark it as "Correct".  But, I'd be curious to know what you came up with, too.  For now, because there hasn't been much activity in this thread for a while, I am going to mark your question as "Assumed Answered", but that won't prevent you or others from posting additional questions/comments related to this topic below.  I hope that's okay with you.  Looking forward to hearing from you soon, Jennifer.

[jenniferbell]

Hi  @Chris_Hofer ! 

This question is as answered as it's going to get, I think. I suggested  @tbunag 's PDF idea to the instructor, but she wasn't super thrilled with this option. I have not heard back from her so I'm not sure if she went forward with this or redesigned her activity. 

[frederick_smith]

While this conversation took place over a year ago, I am interested if any other solutions have been devised?  I would like to do exactly the same thing in my on-line classes as what Jennifer suggests.  This works GREAT in the classroom, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do it in Canvas, unfortunately.

[jenniferbell]

Hi  @frederick_smith ‌,

Unfortunately we have not come up with a more effective solution than already suggested. This hasn't been something I've been asked about very often, so I haven't heard from faculty if they have come up with a useful way to accomplish this. 

If you figure something out, please share!

[frederick_smith]

Will do, Jennifer.  Thank you for your response!

[karen_harris1]

This is not solved.  Group Discussions are valuable, and work seamlessly, but not being able to open Group Discussions to the entire course community once completed misses the boat.  Is this feature, opening Group Discussions to the entire course roster, being proposed?

[nwilson7]

@karen_harris1  I found at least one idea about this in the idea forum:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Group-Discussion-and-Full-Class-Discussion/idi...

What we do, not necessarily the best idea, is to tell the students the groups they are in but not make the discussion a group discussion.  This way they "know" to just comment to their group members posts but have the ability to see everyone.  This obviously does not work if you want to block the ability to see the discussions going on until the end.  

We use this structure:

• Initial post with group directions
  • Thread for group 1 (add any specifics) - started by instructor
    • Comments/thread by group 1 students
  • Thread for group 2 (add any specifics) - started by instructor
    • Comments/thread by group 2 students
  • Thread for group 3 (add any specifics) - started by instructor
    • Comments/thread by group 3 students
  • Thread for group 4 (add any specifics) - started by instructor
    • Comments/thread by group 4 students

While it might be a gradebook nightmare and is more setup, you could only assign the discussions initially to the members of a group creating a separate discussion for each group and then switch it to being assigned to everyone, if you are wanting to accomplish the not see until the discussion is over scenario.  

-Nick

[karen_harris1]

Not acceptable solutions.  From the Discussion Page, instructors should be able to close group discussions for further comment, and then open them to the entire class for full class access.  Small group discussion is pedagogically valuable, but sharing with the larger group is a key part of the overall learning process.

[ElizabethGerber]

I agree. I have been asking about this many years after the initial post and two years after your post, and there has still been no change made to the Canvas LMS that makes it possible to share group discussions with the whole class. It is incredibly frustrating. 

[gnoack]

Hi @karen_harris1 

I agree that this is a valuable tool, let me offer a different solution. 

If you consider how group discussions might play out in a face-to-face course, you would split students into groups, let them discuss, then share back to the whole class a summary of what was discussed, their conclusions, etc..  You would not want to have them rehash every comment that was made during the process, why force online student to read this?  

I suggest as a solution you add another discussion that all students are assigned to, then ask individual groups to create a summary of their group discussion to post to all. 

[karen_harris1]

Hi @gnoack,

While your solution is quite elegant for an in-person SYNCHRONOUS or even a remote SYNCHRONOUS classroom interaction, consider that some voices are most likely sidelined during the share back to the whole class, when the summary/conclusions are presented, assuming those voices were even given space in the real-time small group discourse.

An unanticipated strength of an online ASYNCHRONOUS small group discussion is the opportunity for all voices to be heard, and that opportunity would be expanded if those small group discussions could be opened for the entire class.  No one can force students to read anything, but online discussions suspend time and space, giving students a self-paced realm to interact and then reflect on the multiple perspectives of their peers.

This feature update could only strengthen online discourse, specifically strengthening students' motivation to participate in a meaningful way, knowing their voice will be heard.

[mrr293]

I, too, am still searching for a viable solution to this issue, or at least a similar one. I'm trying to have my online students, who are divided into teams, record short presentations of material relevant to their assigned chapter. As it is part of their course grade, I need an assignment for a specific team but I would like it open to the class so they can view the presentation and discuss it. So far I cannot figure out how to do that without assigning every presentation to every team. Unless I am missing something obvious, it is frustrating process.

[julietdavis]

This is a vital topic for me, as I teach a multimedia course asynchronously, and it needs to be fixed. Here's why it's important in my courses:

1. If a student group is creating a video, they need to post that video to the whole class discussion for critique.
2. But I also need to be able to assign the same grade to everyone in the group and make sure no one is getting a zero who was part of the group.

I have tried to solve this problem by having students start their posts with the first and last names of everyone in their groups. However, that's a really hard way to grade, and students don't always get the names right or in the right place.

As a result, some students always end up with accidental zeroes. And then trying to correct them is super tedious. Some probably never get corrected or noticed by students, so the grades become unfair.

Please fix this so multimedia teachers have a place in Canvas, as well. We already perform a lot of work-arounds, and this one is just too hard. 🙂 Thank you for your consideration!

[johnspat]

Eight years later......Is there still no solution to this issue?  This functionality is imperative for online learning.  Our students deserve to have a variety of formats to work through content, especially in an online format.  Please, say there is a way to do this now 🙂