Students cannot reply to discussion posts

[AlisonRoss]

Hello. Last semester my students used Canvas with no issues. This semester we are using the same Canvas, but they cannot reply to my discussion posts. They are logged in. I have not closed comments - comments are open. I don't understand why they cannot post. I looked at the Student View, too - and sure enough, there is no option for them to reply. What could be going on? Please help! Thanks, Alison 

[greydon]

Hello @AlisonRoss 

Thank you for contacting the Instructure Community. We're sorry to hear you've been experiencing issues with students replying to your discussions. That is odd and it could be a  few possibilities. Firstly, check the discussion settings - ensure that you allow replies. Do you require students to reply before seeing all of the other replies? Secondly, check  the due date - if it was in an old  grading period for some reason that  could be closed to students. Are they able to submit  other  assignments without issues? Third, it could be a school setting or possibly a SIS date setting if you get your students synced over using SIS. There are other things we can check as well but in a situation like this, we really need to see specifics and have the ability to dive into the settings for the course.

Because of the complexity of the issue, and the concerns for privacy, it would be best if you contacted Canvas Support directly to pinpoint the source of the issue and provide a resolution:

How do I contact Canvas Support? - Instructure Community  

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning, @AlisonRoss ...

That does sound quite strange that students would not be able to reply to your discussion topics.  There is a permission setting at the Canvas administrator level called "Discussions - post" that allows users to reply to a discussion post.  It would seem pretty strange to me, though, if your Canvas administrator configured this to not allow students to reply to discussion posts.  But, it might not hurt to have a conversation with your Canvas administrator(s) or someone from your school's Online Learning / eLearning / Distance Learning team to see if they have any thoughts on why this might be occurring on the student side.  It would be interesting to hear what the remedy was...so if you could come back to provide an update once you've figured out what is going on, that would be great.  If talking with your colleagues doesn't solve the issue, then try giving Canvas Support a jingle.

• How do I get help with Canvas as an instructor?
• How do I get help with Canvas as a student?

Looking forward to hearing back from you soon!

[LHumphries]

Mine is doing the same thing. I have published it, checked the due date, re-checked all settings, and students will still not see the reply button to post. I used these often last semester and did not have this issue. 

For now, it let me post a reply and kids can respond to my reply.

[rosddavi]

I know this post is old but I had this happen this morning.  I'm not sure who keeps enabling new features without talking to faculty using Canvas but I had to go back into the weird new due date interface, edit the discussion post and uncheck Disallow Threaded Replies which is how students respond to each other.  Magically the reply button is back now.

[sfintland]

This has been a recurring issue on our campus as well.  

• When close to the deadline, students are able to access the discussion post to create their post, but then get the error message "insufficient permission" when trying to save the post.  We have yet to figure out why this is happening.  A support ticket has been submitted.
• 2nd, when extensions are granted, we have been getting errors where the discussion is closed for comments.  Even though there may not be an until date, the discussion assignment will still close.  Sometimes it will happen after the due date has been reached regardless if there was a separate assign to date for specific students.
  • We were told that to clear out this error was to first resave the discussion as an ungraded assignment and then resave it back as a graded assignment.  NOTE: When doing this, although the discussion re-opened for replies, we learned that all the discussion that were already graded and all the submissions comments that were already made did NOT come back.  They were lost.

I'm hoping a fix will happen soon for these continuous issues that keep happening.

[sfintland]

This has been resolved for us.

[MILOHOYLES]

You could try having them go through grades, then press on the assignment link in the grades for that periods class. once they do, and their screen looks like the picture provided, there should be a comment box. they type their comment, and click save!