Since Canvas can't auto-grade a discussion board for completion, does anyone have a workaround?

[tmorgan2]

It would be nice for Canvas to be able automatically record completion of a discussion (by recording if a students posts) instead of instructors to have to record responses manually. The graded survey was suggested as an option, but students can't see others' responses so there's no discussion. Anyone have a work around to that?

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @tmorgan2 

I guess if it was a toggle on/off choice I wouldn't scream too much, but I am not a fan of just awarding a grade without any evaluation.

Kelley

[tmorgan2]

Not trying to evaluate...giving credit for offering their opinion on a topic/issue. Can evaluate/reinforce intermittently for quality rather than check every single post of every person in a 100+ student class in my case.

[kmeeusen]

Hi again,  @tmorgan2 

Have you considered simply setting a default grade?  https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12834-415255002 

Kelley

[tmorgan2]

No but I'll check it out. Thanks Kelley!

[kosha_bramesfel]

Hi Kelley, this is a good thought, but the problem with this solution is that "Submission status is not factored into default grade application." So, if you assign a default grade EVERYONE in the class gets the grade, whether they contributed to the discussion or not. I am constantly looking for ways to incentivize participation in my online course, but I have 500+ students. Manually updating these grades on a regular basis is not feasible. My best work around so far is to set up a "completion survey" that students complete after they submit their discussions responses. Then to ensure some accountability, I build in a prerequisite path in Modules that requires that students submit to the discussion board before they can access the completion survey. It works, but it would be WAY better if Canvas could add an auto-grade option for use with participation-based discussion boards. (Similar to how Canvas allows for survey participation to count towards participation points).

[dlrnkhata]

Hello @kosha_bramesfel ,

This seems like a good work around. So just to clarify, the discussion board is ungraded but the quiz is graded. So students get an automatic completion grade by taking a quiz that is only visible to students who have completed the requirements. Am I right?

[melissad3]

This is extremely late, but thank you so much for posting this! We have a course that potentially hundreds/thousands of students would be taking at the same time, so typical discussion post grading isn't really feasible. You have saved us hours of time!!!!

[bscudder]

I like this but am curious if anyone has come up with a way to automatically evaluate discussion board postings? I have required discussion board postings (must post to unlock next module) but some of the hundreds of asynchronous participants decided to post an essentially blank post ("." or similar). That counted to Canvas as participating, so it unlocked the next module, but it is obviously not what we wanted. Is there a way to have Canvas look at a rubric for grading a discussion post or something? 

[kosha_bramesfel]

This is mostly correct. The students get an automatic completion grade by taking a quiz that is only visible to students who have contributed to the discussion board activity. The module will unlock the follow-up survey/quiz once the student has added a contribution. Canvas has no built-in mechanism to ensure that the contribution actually meets the requirements that you have laid out for the activity. For example, if you want the student to make three replies, there is no way to set up the module to unlock the quiz/survey only after they make three replies. The quiz/survey will unlock after they make their first reply (and have thus met the requirements of having "contributed").

[dlrnkhata]

@kosha_bramesfel Thank you for the clarification!

[MaryGrassetti]

I also wish that Canvas had this feature. My course is heavily discussion based and it is very time consuming to review each and every discussion. When I teach in person, I don't grade every discussion that students have but I can walk from group to group listening in on the various discussions. I'd like a way for the system to give the student a grade once they have responded to the prompt and replied to a peer. I would then do spot assessments to ensure students are meeting the requirements for discussions. This would make it much more manageable for a discussion based online course.

[lyonscw]

Regarding the default grade option, I think if you first manually grade the people who did not submit, you can then use the default grade to grade the rest. I typically have between 300 and 600 students and this works well for me.