[ARCHIVED] Graded discussions for certain sections but available to all

[tlorenzo]

Hi, was wondering if it was possible to have a graded discussion assigned to only a section of the class but make it available to all regardless if they are part of the section? The discussion groups we have include people from two different sections.

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @tlorenzo  Welcome to the Canvas Community. Sorry to see that your question has been out here for so long!  By now, I imagine you have figured out an answer and moved on to other things! 

As you have likely found out, there is NOT a good way to do this.  Any section-specific assignment can only be seen (and submitted to) by the students within that section.  More importantly, as you have likely seen, section-specific assignments are literally "blocked out" for grading for any students not in that section.  You can only grade the students from that specific section.

What I recommend to faculty who assign a graded discussion to just one section is to ask people from that section to share their discussions with others in the class, especially since it sounds like you are teaching this as one Canvas course site.  If this is something that will pop up frequently enough, you can even make this a graded activity in itself, rotating among the people in charge of sharing the discussion that was unique to their section and giving them a grade for it, so that by the end of the term everyone would be graded for "sharing" the discussion.  Obviously, this work-around won't work with a class of hundreds of students, though.

To share a few things with you based on my own experience as a Canvas administrator, technically you can remove the section restriction from the Assign to menu at any point in time by editing the Discussion--even after people have started posting--and change it back to the default of "Everyone" so that the entire class can see it. However, this is ABSOLUTELY NOT RECOMMENDED for a graded discussion for the obvious reason that it will now be like any other graded activity and the gradebook column for that discussion will now count for everyone else in the class, whereas before it would only count for (or against) the people posting in the specific assigned section.

But with the same thought in mind, this IS do-able for a NON-GRADED DISCUSSION ONLY.  You could assign your prompt to one section via the Post to section.  Only those students in that section can see the discussion and be able to reply to it, of course.  When they are done, to share it with the rest of the class you could remove the section restriction at any point in Post to, change it back to the default of "All Sections" and then immediately move it down to the Closed for Comments area on the Discussions page.  Students from the other section will then be able to see everything that was contributed to that discussion, but will not be able to reply to anything.  

Again, however, I fear for graded work there is really no way to directly accommodate this.