Can I get notification of student participation in a Discussion thread?

[mittelstaedtmd]

We will be using Canvas Discussion to receive homework/project progress for a summer course.  We will not be doing Graded Assignments.  Is there a way to track/receive a push notification when a student submits response to Discussion thread?

[James · Accepted solution]

 @mittelstaedtmd ,

You can set your notification preferences for "Discussion Post" to notify you right away. Then you can subscribe to a discussion to activate that. Note that if you post to a discussion, you are automatically subscribed.

Here are some lessons from the Canvas Instructor Guide that provide additional information.

• How do I set my Canvas notification preferences as an instructor?  
• What are Discussions? 

Note that this will come to you by email. It may be possible for you to set up some action to occur whenever an email is received.

Another possibility is to use Canvas Live Events which are part of Canvas Data Services. This sends a packet to a queue that you then query and process. The Discussion Entry contains a "discussion_entry_created" event that is triggered when a user replies to the discussion topic or thread and a "discussion_entry_submitted" that is triggered when a user replies to a graded discussion topic or discussion thread. That documentation is contained within the Data Services link from the Admin page, rather than in the Community.

I've seen people say they turned the AWS queue on for some things and the usage was so low that their IT department questioned whether it was a legit bill. It would, of course, depend on the stream and what you're receiving.

Here is a lesson from the Canvas Admin Guide: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-17913-42141155235