Anonymous Discussion Forums

[scottdennis]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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Idea:

Instructors can create discussions that allow for posts to be made anonymously

Use Cases:

As an instructor, I want to create discussions in which participation is anonymous. This would free my students to share their thoughts without worrying about judgement / criticism by their peers or me. They'd take risks they might not otherwise.

transferred from the old Community

Originally posted by: Lynn McCarty
Thank you especially for contributions by: Rob Ditto, Allison Pyle, Renee Carney, Robert Jones

[KAilsa_Rowan]

This idea had well over 100 votes in the old community (mine was one of them). Why do we need to vote on it again? Why hasn't it already been rolled into the development plan?

[scottdennis]

Hello Kaye-Ailsa,

One of the main benefits of moving to a new platform and feature discussion format was to find out what is most relevant to Canvas users today and get that information to our Product team in a timely manner.  Bringing over what we think are the top ideas currently, allowing the community to do the same, and then letting everybody vote up or down in the new space is part of leveling the playing field. Having a process based on time (aka voting periods) will, we hope, help us to communicate what will and will not be developed with each development cycle in a more timely and transparent manner.

[canvas_admin]

If this is implemented, please make it optional rather than forced.  We need to know who specifically makes posts and interacts in our forums.

[KAilsa_Rowan]

The original request in the old forums asked for the *option* to create anonymous discussion forums. Most forums should still have clear authorship.

Some specific purposes that were mentioned in the old thread where the anonymous format is valuable:

• for the class members to give the instructor specific feedback about the course format and activities;
• to post questions for the instructor to answer;
• for discussion of sensitive topics such as personal experience, family history, aspects of human sexuality, etc. when that's relevant to the course topic.

[canvas_admin]

Kaye-Alisa,

I agree.  I don't like the fact that we have to re-idea/feature request things that have been sitting there for 2-3 years that had plenty of discussion and likes.

[kona]

 @canvas_admin  the problem with some of the things that had been on the old feature request forums is that they had been there for so long that it was sometimes hard to tell if it was still an issue and/or if people were still wanting the feature. I'm not saying that is the case for this request, but there were a lot of feature requests and it was hard to figure out what current Canvas users really want/need now. This new community and new process streamlines feature requests and should help get more of the most wanted features implemented.

[kbesaw]

This was raised by a couple of customers of mine recently. I'll be working to direct those users here for voting. Thank you for bringing over this key request.

d1241y0

[leward]

Was it not possible in the old platform to determine whether a request was still garnering new votes.  If it was, it is probably still relevant.  I'll be interested to see how the new approach shakes it.  Seems like it wouldn't be hard to reach 30 votes if there's a strong interest in a feature at a given institution.  What happens if all the votes are coming from just one school?  Will a request like that have as much weight as a request with broad community support?

[Chris_Hofer]

 @leward ​, I could be totally wrong on this, but I think that Instructure staff could tell who is trying to "game" the system.  I think I recall hearing some discussion about that when attending "Project Khaki" at Instructure this past March.  Maybe  @scottdennis ​ could weigh in here.

[kona]

 @Chris_Hofer ​ - yes, that was my understanding as well. Instructure can tell where the votes are coming from.