Hello @barnesh
If I understand your question correctly, you are not seeing a the discussion option in your course navigation?
I am not sure if you are asking as a student or instructor. I'll try to provide as much information as I can for you on this.
- In Canvas, there is a navigation link that can be enabled in the course settings as an instructor. If you are an instructor, you would go to your course, click on settings, select navigation. This will display any active and disable navigation links. If discussions are disabled, you can simply move it to your active links list by clicking and dragging it to your active links list. HERE is a guide on how to do that.
- If you are a student, then this would 100% be something that your instructor would need to enable in the course navigation. Unfortunately every instructor sets their course up differently in Canvas. Some have this option enabled, some do not. If they don't have this enabled, you could always ask if they can enable it for you to make it easier.
The easiest way to sort through any unread discussion replies as an instructor is to use Speedgrader. When you access speedgrader for the discussion, the students names list will display a check mark for any replies that have been graded. If a student submitted, or even re-submitted and you have not graded their response you would see an orange dot next to their name. HERE is a guide on how to sort through the student list.
As a student, when you visit the discussion you will see a blue dot next to any students replies that are unread. That blue dot will change colors if you have already read the reply for the discussion you are looking at. HERE is a guide that goes over this for students.
Hopefully this helps a little bit.
-Colton