Can we go back to the previous Discussion Board look/feel please?

[jng12926]

Hello! I am a current graduate student who also happens to be an instructor. I have used Canvas for many many years at several institutions and have always found it to be user-intuitive and a joy to use. I was surprised when I logged in for my Fall classes after a few weeks off to see that the discussion board experience has completely changed. It is terrible and my entire class is complaining about it. What used to be so intuitive and easy to use is now clunky and time consuming. We are unable to see posts and replies without several extemporaneous (and completely unnecessary) clicks. I cannot imagine that focus groups of student users preferred this format over the old. For example, I have been trying to work on discussion board responses for over an hour where as before I would click "reply" and be on my way. No longer can we see the entire thread on one screen without clicking several links.

Please reconsider this design with the needs of your student users in mind. This is a true example of "fixing" something that was not broken!

[TamasBalogh]

Hi @jng12926, we are collecting feedback on the user experience and will bring some enhancements to the UI in the upcoming months based on what we hear. If you have more specific feedback or concern, please reach out to your CSM. We would like to hear the need of the students.

[lshulman]

Specific feedback to improve the redesign:

• Allow ALL posts to be "collapsed" (including initial posts). When a lot of students have posted and/or there are long posts, we should not have to scroll down forever (nor to a "next page") to get to a post we want or be distracted by posts we don't need to look at.
• Restore the "expand/collapse" arrow at top of each thread (in addition to "collapse/expand" all buttons at top of discussion).
• Allow user to "lock" their preferred "sort" view  (eg oldest first) so we don't have to resort (eg oldest first) every time we enter a discussion.
• Restore the indent for each level of replies. And make reply font same size as initial post font.
• Restore the dividing line between threads (bottom of last reply and top of next initial post/new thread).

[jng12926]

These are all good suggestions, but honestly it should just revert back to the previous design. There was nothing wrong with it. Never in my 10 years of teaching and 15 years of using Canvas as a student have I ever heard anyone complain about the discussion board interface.

[JolynnKottke]

It is regrettable when things that are working just fine get overcomplicated and confusing during an unnessesary revision. 

[WilliamHirt]

We started another semester with this very disappointing new Discussion Board redesigned format. The students are not seeing what other students wrote because those responses now take an extra click for them to open up. Last year, it was truly a discussion board, with all commentary fully visible for all to see and reply to in a visually egalitarian, communal way. 

[JolynnKottke]

I agree, it mades an already challenging format (text based "discussion") even more disconnected. 

[TamasBalogh]

Thank you @lshulman. We have already made some changes on the indentation and dividing lines, but will further investigate if we can improve the user experience on reading the replies. Also you can expand/collapse the whole thread.

We started to discover the best way of the sort view, which will include to save the sorting on a user level. We are going to have customer sessions to gather feedback. If you are interested, please reach out to your CSM and let them know.

[cheryltice]

I would like to see a color background, such as putting a pale blue color behind replies, to easily differentiate them from the posts.

[jng12926]

I am providing my specific feedback here. I have several schools that I am at and I do not want to contact different people at each school. Also, am I reading your response correctly that you are only NOW seeking feedback from student users AFTER this horrible redesign has been released? From a UI standpoint, wasn't the time to gather that feedback in the development phase so that a good product was released? This seems incredibly backward. The discussion board did not need a redesign in the first place, and certainly not one as impossible to use, unnecessarily complicated, and unresearched as this one. Where were the focus groups? What other options were considered? What user feedback was sought? Is this just a case of developers needing something to do?

Unfortunately fixes and enhancements in "a few months" is not acceptable. The semester starts NOW.

[hesspe]

I agree with all of  @lshulman 's suggestions.  I would add to his list (more or less in order of significance)

• Making the topic expand/collapse option sticky.
• The button with the groups icon also to have a text label
• A way to quote a selection from a post without having to quote the whole post
• An Edit button appearing for the author on Topics and Replies (instead of being a menu option)

I could make other suggestions, for example we got a recent request for a print option, but I wanted to highlight the ones that seem most significant to me.

Which brings up the matter of process. 

• I think it's really commendable that you are open to changes and are collecting feedback, but I fear a mishmash of good, bad, and totally unrealistic suggestions scattered over a number of different forum topics and elsewhere.  Also people are going to have very different and possibly conflicting priorities that have to be evaluated according to what will provide the widest benefit, which can be a really hard call to make.  If there is not a way to consolidate and organize the suggestions and gather feedback in some systematic way, I can see the discussion descending into chaos. 
• There has been so much fulminating around the redesign and I find it tiresome and unhelpful.  I hope the discussion can be conducted with the presumption that everyone involved has the best interest of the community in mind and is doing their best.   I think the suggestion to "go back to the previous discussions" is unhelpful.  The previous version was primitive, and its simplicity was in one sense a virtue, but it also lacked features that people have been asking for for a long time, and are now using.

[jng12926]

I disagree with you wholeheartedly. Adding features is one thing, and that is fine. Completely re-hauling a design that was user friendly, intuitive and easy to use is another. This new discussion board is completely unusable for us as students, the main audience that should be considered here. I haven't even gotten into the grading side of it yet as my class discussion for which I am an instructor are not due yet. However, in my classes where I am a student, this thing is terrible. As I mentioned before, my entire class (and I have come to learn entire program) is complaining about it. In my 15 years of using the "primitive" design, no one has ever complained about it. Sometimes a good design is just a good design.

Were any user tests or focus groups even done on this redesign at all?

[lshulman]

Consolidating all suggestions for improvement in one place would be a GREAT idea. Make it a poll and bring it to the attention of everyone who has complained (at least since summer 2024 when current version/updates were made). Let users "vote" on which improvements they still want to see done. At least apply the most voted suggestions.

[TamasBalogh]

Thank you for your feedback and understanding @hesspe.

Saving the user setting for expand/collapse option is on our list for sure and will investigate the other suggestions too. I'd like to hear more about the request for a print option. So far, I've only hear that once (maybe that's the same request).

I totally agree with the mixed suggestions or different opinions and thank you for pointing that out. The best example of that is the sorting, some love the newest-to-oldest by default, some really prefer the oldest-to-newest. As a product manager, my due diligence is to identify the issues, consolidate and prioritize. 

[hesspe]

I mentioned the print option as an example of something that was important to one of our Professors, and while it would be a nice added feature,  probably isn't of interest to enough people to justify the development time it would take to implement it.  Another request I got recently possibly along the same lines is the ability for an instructor to reply individually to a student (I unsuccessfully suggested SpeedGrader or Conversations as an alternative).  Dozens of "good" suggestions have been made, but the challenge is prioritizing them according to degree of benefit, how much they'd be used  and the development time required, which "likes" on a discussion forum can hint at but not settle.  Which leads me to try to have a bit more understanding for product managers who have to make difficult decisions and will sometimes get them wrong.

[wstewar1ws8]

A print option should be absolutely standard for Discussion posts. My students submit ~300-word discussions before each class, and my classroom is screen-free, so I and my students all need to be able to print out the discussions. I have heard this complaint from multiple instructors at my university, and your phone support team also acknowledged that many, many people have been making this complaint. If one can't print the posts, then there needs to be an obvious and easy method to export them to a .docx or .pdf. Why was this functionality, which existed previously, taken away in the first place?

[rlbrown21]

Please implement some fixes SOONER than a couple months.   The community was giving feedback before you forced this out.  After this got forced out we get CONSTANT complaints like this:

"

As I am sure you know, Canvas has added two toggles to Discussions, a) for the order of posts, newest/oldest first, and b) to collapse/expand the posts. When collapsed, students cannot see replies to posts, which are the basis for our class discussions.

Is there any way under the Discussions for me to lock in oldest posts first and to prevent replies from being hidden until clicked on? This change in Canvas has made it impossible for me to run my class. 

If I cannot change these settings (and lock them) do I have any alternatives to Canvas?"

Canvas is wasting every schools and instructors time.  This "redesign" took away too much functionality.   I don't know how you missed the YEARS of people telling you this was not ready and just decided to move forward anyway.   Change for the sake of change is never good.  You added very little, and took away too much.   

Instructors are now starting to ask if we can not use canvas.  Yes its that bad.   I am sure this post will get ignored too, but just in case, PLEASE?!  Fix this!

[TamasBalogh]

Hi @rlbrown21, I am sorry you are facing issues with Discussions. Currently, you can't lock the sorting or the expanding in Discussions. My team and I are investigating a way of the sorting functionality which would be good for everyone. 
Also, I said months purposely, as we can't commit to any timeline at this point, but we are actively working on these items.  

[rlbrown21]

I am happy to see there is movement and understand that changes like these take time.  Just know this is affecting student learning.

[mangles]

Tamas.  If CSM is Canvas Support we have tried. I have tried every avenue I know including the Calif State Chancellor’s Office as Canvas has been AWOL in acknowledging our issues.

Discussion Forums are no longer for classroom conversations, rather they are now just a place for students to post their homework. 

[venitk]

@mangles your CSM is your Customer Support Manager. They are separate from Canvas Support (Tier 1 and Tier 2). CSMs are more experienced than Tier 1 support and I've found submitting important things through my CSM is much more direct than through T1 support. I believe you're an instructor, so you might want to approach the instructional designers or the Canvas admin on your campus to ask them to submit your notes to the CSM.  

[mangles]

Venitk. Thank you for clarifying the CSM, and Canvas support structure. You are correct, I am an instructor. I will ask our Canvas admin if he has forwarded my concerns to Canvas. I know he is getting an ear-full these days and I have communicated my observations and concerns to him and our Distant Education leadership team. But, to be honest, it has all been one-way communications.

[venitk]

Yes, I'm sure your admin is swamped, especially with the start of the new year. As another (semi) admin, if you want my advice, I'd suggest either replying to your previous email (so they have it on hand) or copying into a fresh email your notes. Either way, save them from having to search their inbox. Then say that the Discussion Redesign project manager has encouraged you to send any notes regarding the discussion redesign to your CSM and have them go through channels that way, so you are asking your admin to forward your notes to the CSM when they have time. 

[mangles]

Clearly we need a roll-back of some of the enhancement. Recently, due to a lack of response from Instructure, I wrote to the California State Chancellor’s Office looking for a responsible 'manager' to reach out to Instructure. I don't know how much it will help, but I did receive a response for more information including my priorities.

I provided the following and also provided links to the Community discussions. I don't not know if anything will come of it.

The Canvas Discussion Forum updates have destroyed our ability for meaningful discussions by:

1. Default settings that hide student and instructor replies when viewed in the discussion forums as part of student assignments.
2. Posting sort-order reversal. Now the newest are at the top and to oldest at the bottom.  This really does make a difference.
3. Small fonts making it difficult to read replies when one knows to look for them.
4. Lack of instructor classroom Discussion settings. That is, instructors lack the ability to control their classroom for the betterment of the students. The Canvas designers are saying they know better than instructors.
5. Default settings reverting to original, each time students (instructors too) enter a discussion or Canvas. That is, lack of ‘sticky’ configuration settings.
6. Lack of a global ‘Expand Threads’ default setting. Which should be the default so all postings are displayed in the order they were made for the whole class to see and respond to.
7. Inability for keyword searches on all Discussion Forum content, by default. No longer can I see all the students that touched on a topic or subject with their comments, only their initial postings. I have to know where to look before I can conduct a keyword search.

There are features I like in the Discussion Redesign that make editing and subscribing better. But, the most important, the single most important issue for me is that replies made to an initial postings are hidden by default. This is just wrong for teachers, but great for students because they won't read won't they don't see.  The comments are correctly grouped with the initial posting, but they are not readable without students taking action to display the ongoing dialog. This is wrong, so wrong. The discussion comments need to be out there just like in a real discussion where everyone hears everything. The new design hides this important learning experience and allows the students to hide by default.

[MCF1_1_1]

I don't know if this will mostly go down a www black hole, but I spend hours per day in discussion forums and ' it should just revert back to the previous design. There was nothing wrong with it. Never in my 10 years of teaching and 15 years of using Canvas as a student have I ever heard anyone complain about the discussion board interface.', as previous speaker states. I agree 100% with this. There is nothing better about this design. More clicks to get to the same place, more confusion for me and the students, and a sense of just doing things to the interface for the sake of it to prove some sort of point. Please revert, or give me the option of New Style / Old style. 

I am not a happy user.

M

[rlbrown21]

In case you have not see it, there is a small update on some new features.  

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Product-Blog/Discussion-Checkpoints-Sneak-Peek-Video/ba-p/616...

I hope they keep improving as fast as possible

[WilliamHirt]

I agree with this writer 100%. I used those discussion boards for years because they were for, well, discussions: We could all see what each other write and we could reply to each other and have a great exchange of ideas. That's what education is supposed to be about. Now all it is is a list of individual posts and this company made it deliberately hard to see others' responses to them. I've tried for six weeks now to think of one advantage could be of hiding responses this year, but I still can't think of what the rationale could possibly be. 

[lshulman]

<I've tried for six weeks now to think of one advantage could be of hiding responses >

Well, to be fair about it, the ability to hide responses ("collapse all" posts) was a feature in the old version of discussions. HOWEVER, there it was OPTIONAL on the user's end to "collapse" or "expand". I don't recall what the default was when first entering a given discussion. Perhaps it remained based on where the user had last left it set to. It would be nice to leave it to the USER to determine if they want to hide or show all responses and LOCK it to whichever option the user had left it in the last time they opened the discussion. 

What bugs me now is that we canNOT "collapse" initial posts. I don't care to have to scroll through or see what I have already seen.

I can see the rationale for collapsing posts (replies or initial) would be to reduce the length/scrolling for any given discussion page. The fewer posts that are open, the shorter the page will be. Less content to scroll through and less content to get distracted by. But, again, being able to collapse initial posts we don't need to see would make for an even cleaner view for any given discussion.

[JamesSekcienski]

I'm not sure why they designed it to hide threads by default and incorporate pages, but I suspect at least part of the reason was to try to improve loading, especially for large courses and/or courses using discussions with videos.  I know we had discovered an issue with the old design where some of the video replies failed to load since too many were attempting to load at the same time and were timing out/exceeding the request limit.  However, when we switched that course to use the new design (this was prior to it being enforced), we saw that the videos were all able to load successfully.

Nonetheless, I do agree it would be nice if the replies all loaded on one page and mentioned that in my comments on the discussions survey that was shared last week since I have seen that as a request from other people in the Community too.  I also would like to have threads expanded by default, so I'm glad to hear that @TamasBalogh said that is one of the features they are investigating.  This was also one of the options on the survey and I ranked it as a top priority in my opinion, so hopefully others that completed the survey also saw it as a priority. While the discussions survey appears to be closed now, I would recommend keeping an eye on the Product Blog and subscribing to updates in case there are future product surveys where you can share your opinions.

In the meantime, there is a user script that was shared in the Developers Group that will automatically click the Expand Threads button for you on page load and when switching pages.  This is only meant as a temporary workaround until Instructure is able to develop a native feature to save this preference.  It is recommended to share this with your Canvas admin before using so they can review the code and let you know if it is appropriate to use  User Script to Auto-Expand Threads on Discussion Boards 

[TamasBalogh]

Hi James, I'm happy to hear this! One addditional comment: The survey is not closed, we are still gathering feedback. I believe it is closed for you as you've already filled it out. 

[JamesSekcienski]

@TamasBalogh Thank you for clarifying that the survey is still open!

Here is the blog post with the survey, if anyone is interested in participating to share their thoughts too: Discussions: Help Us Improve 

[rlbrown21]

That is good to hear.  Images and video have been an issue with big discussions.  Most other discussion boards that use media heavily went to a card view (log ago) that also addresses this issue.  The card view lets you see more posts, and has clearer icons when there is new posts to read.  Canvas is late to the "modern" discussion, so I don't know why they would not move to a more visual layout instead of hiding everything in a similar layout.  Similar to Padlett or Harmonize

[lshulman]

I worked with the Discussion Redesign for the first time last fall (forced to, as the option to "disable" was no longer). While there is a lot I do not care for here, I do find that arranging initial posts to display "newest first" is more valuable than I thought it would be. This encourages students to reply to the newer posts (as these are then the first ones they see). This does add a level of "egalitarianism" to the discussion boards.

Though I do agree that a single click option to "expand" all could be helpful: especially useful when wanting to search the entire discussion for posts from a given student IN CONTEXT (using my broswer's "find" option vs. the discussion "search" box).

[TamasBalogh]

I am glad you find the newest first option to be useful! I'm not sure what you mean by expand all button would be useful. In the discussion header, there is the expand all/collapse all button which you can use to expand all threads. Is that what you are looking for?

[mangles]

Canvas' statements to provide relief in Nov 2024 are long past. And once in a great while I see a reminder of this sorry discussion release. At this point, it seems Canvas is just waiting us out. And they may be right, as I have given up dealing with them over this sorry situation. I have implemented my own workarounds as best I can and expect to retire before Canvas releases a correction.

~mike angles