Discussion Advice

[schjen]

Hello!

I want to add discussions to my course this year. I have watched the videos and read many posts and am not clear about using one discussion or adding a new one each week. I am most likely overthinking this, but would it be best to create a new discussion topic each week or add a new question to the existing topic? For example, this week I have a video and I am asking students to watch it, pausing as needed, and share two things that they notice in the video and two things that they wonder. Should I make a new discussion for next week's question or should I add it to the one I created for this week? 

Thanks for any clarification, suggestions, or guidance!

Jen

[Jeff_F · Accepted solution]

Hello @schjen  - yes, I do believe there are benefits to having a new board for each topic, be it weekly or perhaps biweekly. For example, the discussions can be set to be graded and then all of these discussion activities can be added to the same assignment group and a weight can be assigned.

This way a grade can be assigned to each student for each week.

[gpillsbury]

I agree with Jeff - definitely create a new discussion activity for each week.  Canvas's discussion tool is really designed for managing a single topic, which would be the week's video.

[schjen]

Thank you for all your guidance and input! I have used it to create multiple discussions. Bonus, I can add them to the modules where they fit best and I hadn't thought of that until I was creating the discussion and thinking about which topic fits best in which week/unit.  

Thank you!