Creating Discussion Topics

Discussions allow instructors, teaching assistants, and students to post messages about a topic in a public forum, at their own leisure. Students can share information and benefit from each other's opinions and input. You can use the Discussions tool to post important messages, generate class discussions, facilitate peer review, and evaluate students based on their responses to open-ended questions.

Creating Topics

From the Discussions screen, click Create Topic. The Create Topic screen appears.

• Enter a Title, Description, and select the topic you want to Show or Hide the topic.
• Select options as desired:
  • Gradable - Creates a column in the Grade Book, allowing you to mark students' contributions to the topic. Note: If you make a topic gradable, you cannot revert back to non-gradable.
  • Editable posts - Members can edit their own posts.
  • Locked - Users can read messages, but can't post messages.
  • Anonymous - Indicates whether posts to this topic will exclude the author's name.

To add the topic to a category, expand the More Options section and select or create a category.

• Click Save. The Discussions screen appears and the topic is created.