Stop students from posting to Discussion Board

[jmerriam]

I use a Discussion Board for having students sign up for dates to present their speeches by using "Reply," then posting "To sign up for Tuesday, November X, click Reply." Then I click "reply" at the bottom of my post, and it posts it.  I want to be able to have a set number of replies, and then the program won't let any more students sign up for that slot. Is there any way to automate this? Up to mow, I've just been keeping an eye on the signup list and then posting a "THIS DATE IS NOW FULL" notice...which some students pay no attention to!

[chriscas]

Hi @jmerriam,

I'll start with the bad news first...  I think it's going to be very hard to have an exact lock on a discussion board set up in the way you're describing.

But there's (hopefully) a good news ending here for you.  Canvas has a "scheduler" built into the calendar that is designed to handle signups like that in a better way.  You will create appointment slots  then students will sign up for one of the slots.  The scheduler is a feature option, so it's possible your Canvas team has it turned off, but I hope that isn't the case and that this would eb a workable solution for you.

-Chris

[CindiKerns]

Hello!

This sounds like an excellent use case for Canvas Scheduler. Does your institution have this tool enabled? Many of our faculty use it for group presentation sign-ups and advising appointments.

[dbrace]

Hi @jmerriam

@chriscas and @CindiKerns both provided the same recommendation and that would be to use the Canvas Scheduler functionality.

Did you use it? How did it go? Do you have any other questions?

-Doug

[RieleeVelasco]

Hello @jmerriam 

At this time, Canvas does not offer a way to automatically limit how many students can reply to a specific sign-up slot in a discussion. All replies remain open unless the instructor manually manages them. 
If you’d like to review general discussion setup options, you can see them here. 🙂

— Rielee