[Discussions] See all of a student's posts together

[david8]

In order to assess and grade a student on participation in the discussion boards, it would be helpful to be able to see all of that student's posts aggregated on a single page.

• Of course the replies will be out of context, but that would still be helpful, especially if there were a "see in context" button on each response by the student.
• It would be helpful if each post came with the basic metadata, including the subject of the thread in which it was embedded if it's a response
• As an option, perhaps one could filter these to see only the top level posts by any particular student. 

[laurakgibbs]

Totally aside from grading, I think this is something that Canvas could/should do in order to create a sense of PRESENCE for the students. I wish the Profile page worked more like an aggregator, bringing together the work the student is doing in each course and across courses. That way, it would be possible not just for the instructor to get a sense of "who" the student is, but other students could really connect with one another as well. Right now, the profile page is pretty much a dud: very limited, very static, pretty much totally boring. It's hard to really get to know people-as-people in the Canvas space.

I think it would be great for instructors and fellow students alike if each students' contributions to a course (and, ideally, across courses) were accessible via their profile page, much like how the profile pages work at other social networks. And if they were using other spaces (blogs, Twitter, etc.), it might also be possible to integrate those content feeds into the Profile page as well.

It is because I believe that student presence is an essential element in effective online courses, my students all blog, and all their work is reflected in their blogs. That allows me to get an overall view of a student's work over the semester and, even better, it gives the student a way to look at all the work they have done and be proud of it. Here's a typical blog:

Indian Epics 

And I run some aggregate blog streams here:

MLLL-4993 RSS Hub: Indian Epics 

I don't know if Canvas would ever become student-centered in that way, but at least for my classes, the students' work IS what the classes are all about, and blogs are the way I can see that participation day by day and week by week. 🙂

[david8]

+1

That's a better reason than the one I gave. Thanks, Laura!

[laurakgibbs]

It's something I've talked with  @jared ‌ about... although that would be a big shift for Canvas, one of the reasons I think it would be successful is that it would have so many different benefits to both instructors and students! 🙂

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @david8 

If I am correctly understanding what you are asking for, you can see all of a student's posts from a discussion when you use SpeedGrader - no meta data, no context except the name of the discussion, but still very handy.  Below is a screenshot example.

I hope this helps,

Kelley

[laurakgibbs]

Hi  @kmeeusen ‌! I don't use these features of Canvas, but the way I understood David's request was as a compilation of a single student's posts across multiple discussions, for a kind of "overall participation" view.

But maybe I was just projecting my idea there because I am kind of obsessed with the need for person-based streams in Canvas. 🙂

[kmeeusen]

Thanks Laura!

In re-reading his question, I believe you are correct. This is an idea that has been asked for many times in the past. There are currently no similar requests open for voting, which is unfortunate.

Kelley

[laurakgibbs]

This is one of the main topics I want to pursue if we get a Connected Learning Group, and we have the votes for it (yay!), so when the Community team has made some changes to the Groups area (I'm not sure what that involves), stefaniesanders‌ told me there would be a Connected Learning Group space which I will use to collect resources relevant to this interconnected-persons approach. 🙂

Just today I saw a great article by Kim Jaxon about the power of seeing a class as a network community:

Rescuing Student Participation Through Digital Platforms - DML Central 

🙂

[kmeeusen]

Thanks for the link, Laura!

Your willingness to share is amazing!

Kelley

[laurakgibbs]

I think you and I are in very similar situations here,  @kmeeusen ‌ with heaps and heaps of stuff we have accumulated over time. 🙂

[thompsli]

This would also be useful for another reason: if a student makes one problematic post in my class, one of the next things I will want to do is see all of their other posts to see if this is a pattern or a one-off.

I teach middle school, and while my students are, in general, pretty good about using class spaces appropriately, sooner or later one of them will probably use discussions for something other than the intended purpose (such as to make rude comments toward classmates), and being able to quickly locate their other recent posts at that point would be very helpful, since I could then print out that single summary page for my records (and forward it on to parents and administrators as needed, depending on the nature of the comments) and go on a rude comment deleting spree.