Discussion Checkpoints: Update Based on Your Feedback!

[SamGarza1]

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A huge thank you to everyone who participated in our recent survey about Discussion Checkpoints! Your feedback is invaluable, and we're excited to share how it's shaping this feature. Based on your input, we're making some key improvements that will be released to the beta environment on February 26th and to the production environment on March 12th behind the Checkpoints feature flag.

More Control Over Your Gradebook Experience:

• Toggle and Setting for Default View: We heard you! You'll soon be able to choose your preferred default view for the gradebook (either the condensed or the in context view). The set default is the condensed view. And don't worry, you can still easily switch between the two views whenever you like.

Speedgrader option modal showing new Default Discussions View settings

Improved Navigation in Discussions:

• Smarter "Previous" and "Next" Reply Buttons: Navigating long discussion threads just got easier. The updated buttons will clearly show you how many total replies an individual has and which reply you're currently viewing.
• "Go to First Post" and "Go to Last Post" Buttons: Jump to the first or last post of an individual with a single click.
• No More Endless Clicking: We've fixed the issue where you can continuously click the "next" button even after reaching the last reply.

In context view of Discussions in Speedgrader

Accessibility is a Priority:

• Thorough Accessibility Audit: These changes to Speedgrader for Discussions have undergone a full accessibility audit by our internal team to ensure everyone can use this feature effectively. The audit focused on key accessibility areas, including how keyboard and screen reader users navigate the interface. Specifically, we addressed navigation between views and how the previous and next reply buttons facilitate moving between posts.

These improvements will be released to the beta environment on February 26th and to the production environment on March 12th behind the Checkpoints feature flag. Users who kept the Checkpoints feature on can expect to see these updates on March 12th. For users who would like to have the Checkpoints feature flag turned on in their account please reach out to your CSM. We're committed to making Discussion Checkpoints the best they can be and will have additional improvements in future deploys. This feature is currently available at the root account level. We encourage you to consider this as your institution discusses enabling the feature.

Stay tuned for these updates, and keep that feedback coming!

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you @SamGarza1 for including the accessibility audit on your announcement. I look forward to exploring this improvement in beta later this week and hope that the keyboard shortcut "c" to jump directly to the Comments filed (like "r" works for rubric and "g" for grade) will be re-enabled.

[cmoeggenberg]

Who do I contact to gain access to this in our Feature Options? I am a Canvas Admin and I do not see it as a Feature for our district. 

[SamGarza1]

@ProfessorBeyrer That fix is unfortunately not in this upcoming deploy but is on our team's upcoming to do.

@cmoeggenberg This feature flag is currently hidden, and you'll need to contact your CSM to have it enabled.

[KeriSalyards]

That's great, my faculty will be really happy (if it works, of course). Question, will the SpeedGrader view toggle work for all discussions in SpeedGrader, or only those with Checkpoints turned on?

[Tasha_Weaver]

Looking forward to checking out these improvements - they sound great! Is there anything on the horizon about the rubric functionality? We have two things on our wishlist:

--Being able to use the rubric to grade (rubric auto-populates the grade)

--Being able to use a rubric with criteria that apply to both the student's initial post and subsequent replies. For example, we typically have an APA/grammar criterion that instructors use to evaluate all posts/replies. Right now, in Checkpoints, you have to divide the points between the initial post and the replies.

[rmartini]

@SamGarza1 - Are these updates delayed in Beta? I just checked but I'm not seeing the updated SpeedGrader interface in our beta instance. I can add checkpoints but I'm not able to see the condensed/with context views in SpeedGrader and I don't see the new buttons.

[SamGarza1]

Hi @rmartini, 

There was a delay with our production and beta deploy this week. Both should be fully deployed by the end of the day. 

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide feedback. I did some testing and have the following observations:

• The checkpoints appear as separate items on the Modules page but only to students, making a total of three lines (one for the discussion, one for the reply to the prompt, and one for the replies to classmates). For instructors, the discussion appears as only one line on the Modules page. It would be better for there to be consistency between these two views, as instructors mostly have the same view of the Modules page (barring unpublished items).
• If submission to a checkpoints discussion is a module requirement, the student must post the reply to the prompt and the required replies to classmates before they can advance past that module item. This is fine but something I'm glad I discovered during testing in case it comes up later. I did not test whether the "contribute to the page" requirement would only require one reply.
• The SpeedGrader view works well and it's easy to switch between viewing in context and not in context. Another thing I noticed is the replies in either view are date sorted, which means that the first reply (either at the top of the non-context view or the first reply in context view) might not be their reply to the discussion prompt. Again this is fine to me but worth knowing before I use it with actual students.

Embedded is a video I made while testing.

Thank you to Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and Gimli son of Gloin for their help with testing. 😉

[KeriSalyards]

I was just testing out checkpoints in our Beta instance with blueprinted classes. The blueprint is locked for content and points. I set a checkpoint in a discussion in the blueprint, made sure that discussion assignment was locked, synced it over to the course, then hopped over to the course. Unfortunately I could edit the points for that checkpoint in the course with no issue - that shouldn't be happening. 

[mbmacdonald]

Hi @SamGarza1 - thanks for the update, and for the hard work on getting this feature adjusted. I like it! I see no issues.

Anyway, I'd like to circle back to the overall "Discussions Redesign" - I know that it was not really clear whether checkpoints was or wasn't a part of the Redesign project... but where can we get updates about other aspects of the redesign. For example, in this blog post from 2023, you wrote "Plagiarism/AI checker: This is a feature I hear about often and is a complex one. We're evaluating all options to ensure we implement the best solution."

I am still having faculty ask me about this. I'm sure there are many possible solutions, but clearly discussion boards are an area where inauthentic content is being proliferated, and I'd like to see if Instructure is working on any way to address this. Or if they are not, and will not, I'd like to see that definitely stated too.

Thanks!

[mbmacdonald]

Hi @SamGarza1 - I have a different, unrelated comment about Discussion Checkpoints. I noticed today that some of the documentation in the instructor guide has been updated to reflect Discussion Checkpoints. Such as this article: How do I change the status of a submission in SpeedGrader?

However, this article is not specifically about a discussion with checkpoints. It is supposed to just be about how to change the status (late, missing, excused) of any graded assignment. And so, the interface that an instructor will see if they are looking at an Assignment in speedgrader (and not a DB) is different from this one, rendering this article unhelpful. I'm not sure if this makes sense.

But more importantly, because Discussion Checkpoints is a feature option, it does not seem right to update all documentation to reflect this feature when there will certainly be a good number of users that have not enabled it.