Discussion Checkpoints: Update Based on Your Feedback!

[SamGarza1]

Header image

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, what I'm trying to say.

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.

[mpaoletti]

For the second time since 1/22/25, I just accidentally deleted a student's post while trying to add comments to the comments box in Speed Grader in the new system. I am beyond furious. I was even using my work-supplied, networked PC, which scrolls more quickly than my own PC (which takes ages). I enter a grade, wait for the scroll (!!!!), click the comments box, and begin typing. But this time, as last time, apparently my cursor was not in the comments box, and by typing the word Good, I deleted a post. It sounds unfathomable, which is why I did not report the first time. But when you enter a grade in the discussion, your cursor defaults to the edit position of a student's post, and a collection of keystrokes can result in deletion. Why? 

[rmartini]

I'm definitely happy to see some of these updates in SpeedGrader! Thank you to you and the team for working on this! Right now, a big roadblock to adoption of checkpoints on our campus is that it doesn't work with group discussions. Many of our online courses are very large and we break students into smaller groups to better facilitate discussion and not let that become overwhelming with 100s of students in the same discussion board. When creating a new discussion, I can see that once the "Graded" and "Assign graded checkpoints" options are enabled, it removes the option to mark it as a group discussion. The people I've talked to who are most excited about checkpoints would need to use them in group discussions. Is this functionality on the roadmap already/is there an estimated timeline?

[AmberHainline]

Hey @SamGarza1 ,

We love the updates that are being released this week! Thank you for focusing on these needs! We recently had a course imported with the wrong due dates. When Discussion Checkpoints were assigned, even though the due dates were changed, the original due date stuck in the module view. The only way to remove it was to copy the discussion within the course. We wanted to pass along this odd occurrence as it might be confusing to students and instructors alike. The May 21 date in the images below was the imported date. The discussion has no close date and the module does not have an open/close date either. 

Instructor View:

Student View

 

[AmberHainline]

@mpaoletti I am so glad you posted this! I had an instructor send this same error through to our university help desk, and we had not heard of the issue nor could we replicate it. It is helpful (and worrisome) that this is happening to others! 

[DuranShamily]

These comments are helpful. Hopefully I can learn from the community mistakes. 

[fsilva1]

Hello, I have been playing around with Discussion Checkpoints in beta, but I am curious as to when this will be made available to us in Production? Thanks!

[mwolfenstein]

First off, thank you again @SamGarza1 for your excellent communication with the community. We just turned Checkpoints back on here at El Camino College. Our Spring term had a late start, and consequently with these fixes in place for SpeedGrader it was viable for us to re-enable it this month. I'll look forward to feedback from my faculty, and I continue to encourage them to engage directly on the community site here as well.

A few of you have mentioned the UI of checkpoints for students vs. instructors in some way shape or form, and I actually wanted to weigh in on that part. I believe I mentioned this over on the now closed Discussions Redesign group. First, adding three elements to the module with two of them being unclickable is undesirable in terms of UI from my perspective. It lengthens the module without adding usability. Second, per @ProfessorBeyrer's point about module requirements, I actually suspect that for many faculty it might not be fine. If faculty are using the "Must move through requirements in sequential order" feature, it is likely that in many instances they'll want students to proceed to subsequent module items after completing their initial post but before replying to others.

In terms of how to approach both the visual and functional aspects of UX here, I think it would be extremely helpful to give users in the Teacher (and associated roles) the option to actually have unique module elements for that initial post and the required responses. It would support faculty using the module requirements with sequential order feature, as well as faculty who aren't locking students out but nonetheless have designed an experience where students are supposed to return to a discussion after having completed other related activities or engaged with additional learning resources.

I recognize I'm proposing something that might not be a small lift since there isn't anything else like it in Canvas currently. With that in mind, the team might want to consider modifying how module requirements work with Checkpointed Discussions so that faculty can still use those two features in combination with each other more flexibly.

I have a whole lot of other thoughts about Discussions in general, but there are two other points from the closed Discussions Redesign group that I wanted to make sure don't get lost. Checkpoints and Groups, and credit for replies under ones own top level post.

The first point has come up previously. @SamGarza1, you mentioned here that you're tracking interest in this area. I went ahead and created it as an Idea for users to offer their use cases: Add Checkpoints To Group Discussions. I know this is a big deal for a lot of users on my campus, so I'm hoping that it's something that gets traction relatively soon.

The second point is that currently teachers don't have an option to for students to get credit for replies to other students under their own top level posts. I recognize that this one varies depending on the use case, but for many of us we want to reward students engaging in exchanging responses on a discussion post. Since Checkpoints doesn't currently support that, we can't use that feature effectively without contriving some sort of work around or forcing students to make additional posts just to get credit that we want them to receive.

Thanks again for keeping us updated, and for engaging the community in the development of a solution to the issue with Checkpoints and SpeedGrader.

Also @ProfessorBeyrer, watch out for that Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. She'll steal your silverware!

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you @mwolfenstein for your thoughtful comment. Your suggestion about flexibility in checkpoint discussions as part of module requirements is a good one. In one of the classes I teach there's a single discussion that has a four-part structure:

1. Student replies to the prompt
2. Student replies to a classmate
3. After consuming some related to the topic, student replies to their original reply (now what do you think?)
4. Student replies to a classmate's original reply

The content they consume before part three is after the discussion in the module, so this would be a challenge to use with module requirements *if* the requirement is to submit the assignment (or get a minimum score).

However, I found a workaround: set the requirement to be contribute to the page instead of submit the assignment or get a minimum score. So with the complicated discussion structure I described above, using this option would allow me to make it a requirement and encourage students to explore the rest of the module before replying to classmates and reaching that checkpoint in their learning.

[hansonav]

Just to echo @rmartini and @mwolfenstein - without being able to use checkpoints with a group discussion, checkpoints won't be adopted by many that are avid users of discussions in Canvas as many rely on group discussions. I teach an online course where I vary my discussions each week (sometimes they are small group, some whole class, sometimes split into two sub-groups, etc.). This gives the students different goals and ways to interact with their peers. If I can only use checkpoints for some of my discussions, the functional experience and look/feel of what happens in in the modules would be so different that it wouldn't make sense to use. We don't want to lose functionality in one area just to gain something different; hopefully we can continue to build and expand on the options already in Canvas rather than needing to make a choice between functional elements in course design.

[Rothh]

@SamGarza1 is there a plan to fix the issue that @AmberHainline brought up? We copy our courses each semester and have run into the same issues with due dates sticking to discussion boards with checkpoints enabled. The only solution we've found is unchecking assign checkpoints, saving the discussion board, then going back in and re-adding checkpoints along with all the points and due date associated with them. This is time consuming. I've reached out to support about this but they don't have a solution.

[DuranShamily]

@SamGarza1 great job with communication. My questions already be answered.

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Edit: video replaced to show that group discussion setting is disabled if checkpoints are enabled and vice versa  

Hi @rmartini , @hansonav , and @mwolfenstein . I did some testing and am able to add checkpoints to a group discussion. The embedded silent video shows enabling checkpoints to a discussion that has not yet had students respond - I wonder if that is is why you and your users have experienced an inability to enable checkpoints for a group discussion.

This silent video shows a group discussion having the discussion checkpoint option enabled.

The embedded silent video shows what happens when a group discussion has checkpoints enabled:

[rmartini]

@ProfessorBeyrer - It can be easily missed but your video actually shows the problem. Since the group settings were already selected, you may not have noticed that the "This is a Group Discussion" and the selected group set disappears around 0:25 (immediately after you enable "Assign graded checkpoints"). And once the discussion reloads after you saved your changes, the Groups button doesn't appear in the top right like it did before (around 0:54).

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you @rmartini for doing the follow up that I missed! And also for commenting on it before my .beta instance refreshed so I could watch my group discussions disappear at the click of a check box. 😅 I was so focused on one detail I ignored the other. There’s a lesson in there for me somewhere, but more important is that Instructure fix this error. I’m one of those instructors like mentioned by @mwolfenstein that uses groups so my students’ discussion experience is more manageable. I don’t want their smaller teams of scholars to devolve back into the loneliness of the crowd. Thanks again to both of you and @hansonav for mentioning this. 

[mwolfenstein]

@ProfessorBeyrer definitely appreciate you taking the time to check. Sam actually posted elsewhere that Groups were specifically not included in this feature on release and that they were evaluating user interest in it which is why I decided to make the[Discussions] Add Checkpoints To Group Discussions feature idea. That way folks can support the idea with their different use cases to help Instructure determine how to prioritize it. I will confess it's another one of those areas where I'm a little mystified as to why this feature wasn't supported on release. I know that we were collectively putting a lot of pressure on the team to get Checkpoints out the door, but it's an arbitrary exclusion as I strongly suspect that there's a very big overlap in faculty use cases between post once reply X times format and groups. It's not something that could be easily determined up front quantitatively without doing an extensive analysis of discussion prompts, but I'd be surprised if a majority of group discussions don't also have a reply requirement of some sort written into the directions/scoring. I would also go so far as to assert that this is another reason why students should be able to get credit for replying to their peers in a thread that they started.

[hansonav]

@mwolfenstein Thanks for adding it as an idea - I'll watch when it becomes available for more upvoting/commenting! I just wanted to reiterate here as well since those processes for review weekly/categorizing weekly for the ideas and then becoming available to vote may take a bit of time and to gain traction (hopefully!). When checkpoints is enabled, it may be a big consideration for users on whether to utilize checkpoints or not. I think group discussions is something I see with instructors frequently enough that it isn't a fringe use case to discussions, but rather one of the foundational ones that I hope will continue to be brought forward and expedited. Appreciate the dialogue here to continue the conversations as we go forward.