[ARCHIVED] Discussion Issue

[rwhitakerheck]

I set up graded Discussion Forums for a course that has 5 students enrolled. When I access the link to the first discussion forum, I only see #1 student's post.  However, when I access Speed grader, I see submissions to grade from students #2 and student #3, but not the submission from student #1 that I saw under the Discussions link. How can I correct this so that all five students see all discussion posts and that I also can see their submissions in Speedgrader? Does it have something to do with setting up Groups? Thanks! 

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @rwhitakerheck  - It very likely may have to do with groups, and it's possible you figured this out on your own, since I see your question was posted a few days ago.

Did you allow self-signups?  My hunch is this may have been the case. It sounds like students may have replied to your discussion prompt before joining a group.  The best advice I can give you is to NOT create an assignment that requires group work until all of the groups are "set," because if a student did NOT join a group, they can still easily reply to a group discussion.  (Too easily, in my humble opinion!)   It's best to disable the ability for self-sign up after all groups are set by unchecking that checkbox on the groups dialog box (see How do I prevent students from switching groups in self sign-up groups? ).

My own experience is that what you are seeing matches this issue.  SpeedGrader will show the replies for people who DID join a group first, but it will not show replies for those who did NOT join a group first.  Try this: head to Discussions and click on your topic, and check for replies to that prompt without following the links to the specific group discussions.  Any replies you see on the main "landing page" for that discussion prompt means the student did not join a group, at least at the time of posting a reply.

Hope this helps a bit in explaining the mystery, Rosalynne.  Not too sure you can do much at this point to "repair the damage" other than making sure everyone is in a group and that you disable any self-signups before the next discussion assignment.