Discussions
Quick Start Guide

Discussions are an effective way to stimulate student engagement and collaboration, foster a sense of community, offer feedback, and help students explore the course content. Asynchronous discussions encourage deeper reflection and critical thinking, enhance student exposure to various course materials, present students with diverse perspectives, and enable instructors to assess student learning.

Setting up a discussion forum, topic, and thread

D2L discussions are organized into the following:

  • Forum: broad categories for discussion
  • Topic: specific discussions within the forum
  • Thread: student response within the topic

 

Adding a Topic and Forum
  1. Navigate to Course Materials > Content.
  2. From the Table of Contents, select the module where you’d like to add the Discussion.
  3. Click Upload/Create > New Discussion if you are creating a new discussion. If your Discussion already exists, you can click Existing Activities > Discussion and select the Forum/Topic you wish to add.

    Note: I
  4. Give your new topic a Topic Title and add instructions for your students in the Description textbox. You can set availability dates, release conditions, and group restrictions to your topic. You can also add rubrics and evaluate topics, if you provide a Grade Out Of score.
  5. Click Change Forum to add a new Forum or link to an existing Forum.
  6. If you are creating a new forum, provide a Forum Title or if a forum exists, choose it from the dropdown. Click Apply Changes.
  7. At the bottom of the screen, toggle the topic from Hidden to Visible.
  8. Click Save and Close when done.
Editing Topics

If you need to make any updates or changes to a topic, navigate to Communication > Discussions. Expand the dropdown menu beside the topic and select Edit Topic.

Adding Additional Topics

Additional topics can be added to already created forums. To do this, expand the dropdown menu in the discussion forum you wish to add another topic and click Add Topic.

Adding a Thread/Post
  1. In the topic where you want to add a thread, click Start a New Thread.
  2. Add a title to the thread and discussion into the textbox. In Brightspace Discussions, you are not limited to posting text. You can post video, audio, images, etc. Consider giving students options in their modes of expression.
  3. Click Post.

Use Cases for Discussions

  • Reflective journaling
  • Private discussion forums for journaling
  • Q&A
  • Case Studies
  • Group-specific discussions
  • Jigsaws
  • Debates
  • Peer assessments and feedback
  • Introductions

Additional Resources

Not all discussions settings can be easily found. Please contact EdTech for further assistance.

Contact edtech@langara.ca for more information.

License

Quick Start Guides for EdTech Tools Copyright © by Briana Fraser; dianethompson; Julian Prior; Katherine Cheung; Susan Bonham; and Luke McKnight. All Rights Reserved.

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