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 Forum and Topic
  1. Click Communication > Discussions in your Brightspace course.
  2. Click New and select New Forum from the dropdown menu in the Discussions List tab.
  3. Give your new forum a Title and provide a brief description in the Description textbox.
  4. Click Save and Add Topic.
  5. 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 for each topic, add rubrics, and evaluate topics.
  6. Click Save and Close when done.
Editing Topics

If you need to make any updates or changes to a topic, 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. Navigate to Discussions in your Brightspace course and click on a topic where you want to add a thread.
  2. Click Start a New Thread.
  3. 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.
  4. 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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