Respond to general discussion as a group

[jcazalas]

So I've read up and am very familiar with Groups, Discussion, and Canvas' implementation of group discussions, which are discussions strictly among members of a given group from a group set. That makes perfect sense for that application.

Here's what I'm looking to do. I have groupsets created and groups within them, and my purpose is to facilitate easy submission and grading of group assignments. One member submits, and the grade, and feedback, is given to all group members. Works as designed. Yay!

I was hoping to have discussions work the same way. Meaning, my initial understanding of group discussions and choosing the option "This is a Group Discussion" was that it would be a discussion for the entire class, BUT posts and responses would be given as a group (and graded as a group). Clearly, that is not how it works, but I'm still left with the question of how to do that.

In short, I want discussions that include all students in the course. However, the posts and responses to said discussions should be given (and graded) as a group. So Group 4 posts their initial post, and then Group 2 responds to that post, etc.

Is that even possible? Or do I just have to have individuals post on behalf of the group and then manually propagate the given grade/feedback to all group members?

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

I routinely set up Group Discussions. My course has four groups: Blue, Gold, Green, and Red. The students in the Blue group can only see the Blue group discussion. The Gold group can only see the Gold group discussion, and so on. You can't set up group discussions in which the Blue and Gold members talk to each other. You can, of course, set up a discussion involving everyone in your class, but the students will be posting as individuals, not as "group" members. 

Grading Group Discussions is done through Speedgrader. You'll see and grade the students' contributions as individuals. Unlike Group Assignments, it's not possible to simply give the Group one grade. You're going to have to mark each student one at a time.

I know that these are not the answers you are looking for, but it is what it is.