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

[josh_emmitt]

I agree, this feature with all the options you mention is very important to have.

[peytoncraighill]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

It sounds like a few people are already using Piazza with encouraging results. For those that are using Piazza, are you using the Canvas integration (see: Piazza's documentation on Canvas integration) or are you setting up an independent instance outside of Canvas?

[RobDitto]

We're using the Canvas integration with Piazza for this need, in a limited fashion.  However, because our institution lacks any sort of legal agreement with Piazza or security assurances from them, we'd much rather have a Canvas feature for anonymous discussions.

If others have had better luck engaging the supplier of Piazza legally or business-wise, I'd love to hear from you. It's laudable that they provide such a wonderful students-helping-students discussion platform, but some institutions need a different working relationship with vendors who handle FERPA-protected data.

[scottdennis]

That is an important point, Rob.  Thank you for bringing attention to it.

[j_egan]

We would love to see this added. This is perhaps the main reason some of my colleagues are using Piazza: students who are circumspect about asking "dumb" questions love being anonymous to their classmates. Staff can always see who the poster is, so ensuring students are collegial isn't really an issue.

It's nice that Piazza is integrated, but:

1.) Eventually Piazza will start charging licence fees--or use our data in a way that precludes continuing with them, and

2.) One less tool/platform is always a win for users--more reliable, easier to use.

Thanks!

JE

University of Auckland

[peytoncraighill]

We recognize the value here, and we're interested in investigating all of the use cases this request may address, but this won't be happening within the next six months. In 2016, we'll be researching and prioritizing improvements to our Discussions tool, and this will be one of the items we continue to investigate. Please see other comments in the thread for existing (though potentially suboptimal) workarounds.

[jbontemps]

I completely agree that I would like this feature. However, I would like to make sure that while it is anonymous for students to see and feel comfortable posting, as the instructor I would like to know who is posting.

[john_a_daubensp]

I agree 100%-users have expressed their preferences quite well before. This has been suggested for two years (or longer) with no action even though it has gotten a great deal of support from users. It was a feature of the Blackboard system we abandoned on the promise that Canvas would offer continuous instead of periodic, massive upgrades. Most of the upgrade features I've seen have been in response to administrators' requests, not those of users. Well, I guess administrators do make the purchasing decisions, so that's where the bread is buttered. I still would like to have this feature so that I do not have to create Google polls to get anonymous responses to questions and suggestions.

[john_a_daubensp]

Please add my vote for anonymous discussions. This may be the third time in 2 years that I have supported this with a vote.

[s_d_duke]

Any news on the improvements to Discussions  @peytoncraighill