[ARCHIVED] Disappearing posts

[kbarger2]

I have two students from two different courses that have had posts in discussion board disappear.  They said they posted them and then when I graded it in speedgrader, they were not there.  Any help?

[distance_ed1]

Hi Kelly! I've helped a lot of faculty with issues like this, and there are a few possibilities!

• I've seen students using the Canvas App post their reply, see the post on the discussion, and then find when they 'refresh' the app or view the discussion in a browser that their reply never posted. We do not recommend using the Canvas App to post discussion replies because of how many times we've seen this!
• If the discussion is a group discussion, I've seen students post to the main discussion board instead of their group discussion. Those main discussion board posts do not appear in SpeedGrader.
• Finally, I've seen students say they posted their discussion reply when they actually created a new discussion board or posted to a new discussion board another student created. Check your Discussions page to make sure you don't see any discussions you don't recognize!

Hopefully that gives you some idea of some investigative steps you can take! Your Canvas admin should also be able to scour the access logs for those students and tell you whether they've even viewed the discussions and potentially what device they were on at the time!

All the best,

Danielle Casey

eLearning Program Coordinator

Lower Columbia College

[kbarger2]

Danielle, that helps a lot for investigating.  How exactly would a student create a new discussion board?

[distance_ed1]

I'm glad that helps! The Canvas Guide How do I create a course discussion as a student? will show you exactly how they do it!

I'm not sure if it's a setting that changes depending on how your Canvas is set up, but at my institution, students are able to create their own discussions by default. If you want to turn off their ability to create new discussions, this guide will show you where to find that setting in your course!

All the best,
Danielle

[kbarger2]

ok I see how they can create a discussion board via the discussion index but I don't allow them to see that navigation.  So in the edit for my discussion boards, it says group discussion but I only have one group the whole class so does that change anything?  I don't see from the canvas guide how they could create a discussion board if they don't have acces to the index.

[distance_ed1]

If they don't have access to the index, then you can probably rule out the possibility that they created their own discussion boards!