How do I ensure that the entire class can view and reply to Discussions that I have published?

[mrfb123]

I want to open a discussion board for students to participate outside of class by posting questions, comments etc. I have published a new discussion this week, and several students have been able to see it and reply on that thread (image: Canvas question.png). (The selection "Discussion" is also greyed out, even though I have Discussion settings set to "All can view and reply").

The problem is, a large number of students do not have access to this at all - one of my students did a screengrab of their access to the course website, showing the lack of the Discussion option in their menu (image: studentView_image003). I'm not sure how to rectify this. Again, some can view it and have replied successfully, but many others have the situation shown in the second image as well.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions! 

[Steve_Watts · Accepted solution]

Hi  @mrfb123 and welcome to the Canvas community.
The first thing you should check is that the Discussions tool has been added to your course navigation menu. If you're seeing it in grey that usually means either there are no discussions in the course (which is not the case in your course) or it's only been added to the menu for teachers and hidden from students. Go to course settings and change to the Navigation tab to check what's being shown on the course menu. If Discussions is in the bottom half of the list, drag it to the top half to make it visible. See this page for details: How do I manage Course Navigation links?‌

If some of your students have managed to reply to the discussion then they've probably got to it by some other route - for example they might have seen a notification on their dashboard about a new discussion and followed the link from there.