[Discussions] Grading Discussion in the Discussion Stream

 

I often use the Discussion feature as a Do Now activity for students in my classes. I try and reward students with points for participating in the discussions daily. Sometime going through the Speedgrader to grade these can be a longer process than what is necessary. I think if we could somehow include a grading box right along in the student stream where they post, it would be much easier to read replies, ensure student understanding, as well as saving time to grade students 1 by 1.

57 Comments
lisahistory
Community Novice

I've revived a form of this at " style="color: #2989c5; , for voting starting Nov 2.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

This idea is one of the lucky ones that was selected to get a little more time for voting as part of our evolution of the feature idea process. It was selected because of it's vote count and/or comment thread.

*Selection criteria: Most (not all) ideas that received 70+ votes in their initial voting round.

mmoore1
Community Contributor

I like this idea too, and I just phrased it a little differently from a design perspective that I think you might like.

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8439-include-entire-thread-in-speed-grader 

llane2
Community Member

Interesting! Looks like the grade would still be applied per student, though, rather than per post?

bogardde
Community Participant

A more intuitive way to grade discussion posts right in the discussion would help me "sell" the Discussions feature to my teachers. The clunky back-and-forth with Speedgrader turns a lot of them off.

pagem1
Community Novice

I used this feature all the time in Moodle and desperately miss it. I was able to give points on each post and the student's discussion grade was the accumulation of points. It was incredibly easy to do and I miss it Smiley Happy

allan_trautman
Community Explorer

For me, this all boils down to one of two design changes. Either

  1. Place entire threads in SpeedGrader—or at least give us the ability to respond to a post from within SpeedGrader, or
  2. Create the ability to grade individual posts—using a rubric—in the main discussion threads themselves.

Of course, you could do both 1 AND 2, and everyone would be happy at that point!

bnash
Community Novice

I voted up for this, but I agree with Allan Trautman above. When grading student Discussion activity, it would be helpful not only to see the student's posts and replies, it would also help to see MY reply to that student (if I replied in the Discussion). I want to ensure I provide "regular and substantive interaction." If I did not reply to a student in the Discussion, I may wish to reply to that student using private feedback in Speedgrader. Right now, it is inconvenient using the 'open two windows' approach. If we can't have the grading tool in the context of the Discussion itself, it would work for me if I can at least see each student's post and replies in Speedgrader along with my reply to that student. Then I can easily decide if I wish to give that student more feedback or not.

ewest
Community Contributor

Would it be possible to receive an update on the consideration for this feature? Our institution just switched form Moodle, which had forum rating. Some sort of equivalent would be super helpful, especially for classes with a lot of students.

Thanks!

Evan

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Hey  @ewest  Welcome to the Canvas Community (even if somewhat belatedly)!

Seeing as you mentioned that you are relatively new to Canvas and the Community I thought I'd point out a few resources in case you hadn't seen them yet.  In Studio we have a link to https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-4396 in case you are interested in learning more.  We also have a button on the right side of the same page that links to a sort of the current ten percent of ideas by vote count.  Every quarter our Product team will give an update on these ideas - are planning to build it in the near term, are we not going to build it soon but will keep it under consideration, or will we never build this (and why not).  

Currently this particular idea is not in that top ten percent but that doesn't mean we won't consider it.  When we are planning a new development project (aka a Product Priority) our product managers read every related feature idea and often benefit from the comments and use cases and descriptions people post on the various related ideas.