Discussions to be updated sychronously

[hanzi_teo]

With the discussion redesign, can we please ensure that the students and teachers do not need to click refresh to see the new posts / replies? These should show up automatically!

This has been raised before here by @mabrams & @stelpstra : https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Allow-Discussions-to-be-synchronous-with-quot-...

I didn't see this mentioned in this feature user group so I wanted to raise it here and hopefully get some attention so that we can have this as part of the upcoming release! With hybrid and sychronous lessons, the discussion features need to keep up with the pace of learning. 

[Katrina-Hess]

Hi @hanzi_teo, our team is actively exploring this feature as we know it would provide great value. It's not a trivial feature to build. Once we better understand the technical effort we will be able to add it to a roadmap. 

[wboswell]

Oh, that should have been in the initial roll-out. 😬 It's an integral piece to interaction. 

[d_j_corbin]

I strongly agree!

[johnmartin]

It's in modern chat clients. I wonder if the idea of what a "discussion forum" needs to evolve to match current ways that students discuss online outside of Canvas? 

[Katrina-Hess]

That's exactly the train of thought we're exploring, "How does Canvas Discussions need to evolve?" Our goals are to modernize our approach, as well as, ensure we support the teaching/learning cycle. When Discussions was first built it was meant to facilitate asynchronous conversations. In today's world, communication tools are becoming more of a hybrid between synchronous and asynchronous conversations. I'd love to hear from you all on your specific use cases for synchronous features! 

Best, Katrina

[johnmartin]

@Katrina-Hess,  I'd love to chat with you about this! How do we connect?

[stelpstra]

I would like to know if this feature has been implemented yet. Where every communication app nowadays pushes messages directly (so you never have to question if the information available is complete or not), whether the app was intended for asynchronous or synchronous communication, I could not imagine a reason not to have posts and replies appear automatically instead of having to refresh the page manually. Can anyone confirm that this is already implemented or not or else on the roadmap?