Anonymous Discussion- Option to hide names from students only

[CASEYKROUSE]

Currently if the Anonymous Discussion has the options 'Off,' 'Partial' which gives students the option of sharing their name and profile picture, and 'Full' which means "student names and profile pictures are hidden from other course members, including teachers." We would like an additional option which would hide names on the student end- but not the teachers. 

We recommend that teachers avoid using any digital feature that limits their ability to identify students- both for classroom management and safety reasons. Teachers must be able to promote digital citizenship and hold students accountable for their online behavior towards their peers and be able to provide the necessary support and counselor referrals for a student in the event that there were concerning statements made.

While we think students not being able to identify one another in a Discussion would foster more honest responses, unfortunately we will be discouraging its use across the district as is.

[JOHN_HOLLOWAY]

Absolutely agree. Consequence-free anonymous commenting between students at secondary and primary levels is a horrible idea.

[jawmedina]

Absolutely agree. I have had students post very inappropriate stuff and had to report it. If this bad idea is allowed to go forward so teachers cannot identify the student, the few bad apples will be free to post whatever they want. Faculty and administrators should be able to see who posted. I had to turn off editing/deleting as I had a student post and then later delete a very inappropriate comment before I could screen capture and report it.

[adam_c_voyton]

@jawmedina & @JOHN_HOLLOWAY I concur with the sentiment. It's imperative for administrators to have immediate access without relying on service requests to Canvas tech support for manual data retrieval. Such delays could pose safety risks and circumvent the system's identity management protocols. While this issue may be more pronounced in K12 settings, it's also pertinent in higher education, particularly with traditional-age students who might not fully appreciate the educational environment. The absence of a feature flag to disable anonymous posts in New Discussions raises concerns, and it's unclear why this functionality isn't available. In the past, when other potentially problematic features were introduced as enforced features, Instructure adjusted course based on community feedback, such as with the View as Ungraded feature in Canvas course gradebooks. I strongly hope that the collective voices are heard and the anonymous discussions feature is made optional as a feature flag controlled by a Canvas admin. 

While we can request logs from Canvas support, direct access for Canvas admins to intervene and audit LMS records as necessary would be optimal. For instance, in situations where a student makes a threatening remark, prompt action is vital, and delays could hinder the identification of the student involved. Although @JamesSekcienski suggested prioritizing these tickets, it appears this issue remains unaddressed. Given its critical nature, I urge Instructure to reconsider. It's worth mentioning that our institution is implementing Redesigned Discussions for all Summer 2024 term courses starting on 5/6/24. We plan to enable the Redesigned Discussions the week before classes commence to avoid disruptions mid-term. 

Lastly, I'd like to share an intriguing use-case. Today, a user submitted a ticket reporting difficulty loading their discussion board page due to 70+ posts, each containing an embedded video. By converting the discussion to the redesigned discussion format, replies were collapsed under each user's post, alleviating the strain on the page and allowing it to load successfully as videos only loaded when the replies were extended into view when the user clicked on replies for a post. 

[hesspe]

@CASEYKROUSE  @jawmedina  @jawmedina Here is the other side of the argument.  Partial Anonymity is NO ANONYMITY.  If you're going to allow partial anonymity, don't even bother.  Why?  Because any Teacher, Designer, or Admin can change the settings and reveal the identities of posters.  Then you have made a false promise to students that they can hide their identity.  To my way of thinking that is not just bad design - it is unethical.  I can assure you that I feel at least as strongly about this as you do!

Here is a solution I would offer as a compromise.  Allow for a setting: Teacher can review anonymous posts before posting.  That way anonymity would be true preserved and the Teacher would maintain discretion to screen out posts they thought would be damaging.

[hesspe]

@CASEYKROUSE  @jawmedina  @jawmedina Here is the other side of the argument.  Partial Anonymity is NO ANONYMITY.  If you're going to allow partial anonymity, don't even bother.  Why?  Because any Teacher, Designer, or Admin can change the settings and reveal the identities of posters.  Then you have made a false promise to students that they can hide their identity.  To my way of thinking that is not just bad design - it is unethical.  I can assure you that I feel at least as strongly about this as you do!

Here is a solution I would offer as a compromise.  Allow for a setting: Teacher can review anonymous posts before posting.  That way anonymity would be true preserved and the Teacher would maintain discretion to screen out posts they thought would be damaging.

[JOHN_HOLLOWAY]

I would never promise full anonymity for student comments on anything that other students are going to see. I do offer full anonymity on comments about me as the instructor or on the class but not for other students. Like with other tools, I would tell students that their identities are hidden from each other but not from the instructor or I wouldn't use it at all. Plenty of other digital tools have this feature. 

[hesspe]

@JOHN_HOLLOWAY 

Re: I do offer full anonymity on comments about me as the instructor

But students would have to take your word for it, and you may be perfectly reliable, but not everyone is.  And in certain circumstances for many people the temptation to violate it could be great. Plus, Canvas doesn't offer tight control about who can add teachers to a course.   And what about Designers?

Your solution might work for K-12, but I don't think it works in situations where one would want to allow students to share sensitive material and be certain that their identities are safe.  

If you're not willing to offer full anonymity because you're concerned about people posting inappropriately, why not just have a non-anonymous discussion?  

Even in higher ed, I think anonymous discussions will be appropriate only in very special circumstances, but "anonymity light" seems worse than no anonymity at all to me.

And there may be other tools that have that feature, but there also tools that provide certain anonymity.

[CASEYKROUSE]

I agree- if I told students their identities would be hidden from their classmates to foster more honest conversation and then went ahead and identified them to the group without permission- that would be unethical. Fortunately, the Discussion anonymity settings cannot be changed after a student has submitted a response, even by an account Admin. 

While vetting the replies before posting would prevent offensive or off topic statements from being added to the Discussion, it would not solve the need to identify a student if they made any references to self-harm or other situations that an educator would be obligated to report. I also still believe that students, especially at the K-12 level who are often required to participate in digital citizenship lessons and agree to the responsible use of their devices, should be held accountable for their behavior in an online forum.

[hesspe]

OK, I've come around to agree that there are situations where it would be good for the teacher to be able to create a discussion topic where the identity of the student remains visible to the teacher but hidden from otehrs, as long as:

- the option to make a discussion topic full anonymous is preserved for teachers who want it 

- TAs and Designers are not able to see student names

- There is a prominent message that notifies students as to the anonymity setting for a particular discussion.

The problem, I'm guessing, is that this amounts to a fairly big re-coding task.

[Siddiq43]

While I am all for anonymity, I do think it is important to include students on such an important topic as this. Teachers are expected to be both subjective and objective to this, given the sensitivity and the impact that these discussion post can have on the students, more specifically, the student who post, it would do everyone some good to have some form of open dialogue with students to get their perspective on this topic.

[JamesSekcienski]

@SamGarza1 Are you able to provide any additional insight to this discussion about the Anonymous Discussion options.

Personally, I am also concerned about making class discussions fully anonymous to both teachers and students.  I thought the feature was going to be like the anonymous feature in Piazza that made posts anonymous to other students but still allowed the teacher to see the students' names for accountability as needed.  However, now I realized I should have tested this feature sooner.

At the very least, is there a way for admins to know who makes a post in case something inappropriate is posted or something needs to be legally reported/investigated further?

In addition, is there a way for admins to disable the anonymous discussion options if they don't want this enabled for their school since it may cause issues with oversight and accountability?

[SamGarza1]

Hi @JamesSekcienski , 

Your concern is understandable and I'm sorry our documentation didn't provide enough information. While instructors and admins are not able to find out who an anonymous user is our engineers still can. A support ticket would need to be submitted and we would provide the information. 

We did add Reply Reporting which empowers students to report and have a notification sent to their instructor for posts that are offensive or are concerning. 

Anonymous/Partial discussions are not currently behind a separate flag or setting but it's something we can change if we receive enough feedback from users. 

We're currently collecting feedback and doing discovery on how we do anonymous discussions and assignments to see what improvements we can make. 

[JamesSekcienski]

Hello @SamGarza1,

Thank you for the update and additional information.  That is good to know that if we need to find out who an anonymous user is we can go through support for the engineers to get the information.  Do you know if these requests will be given quick escalation and/or priority when submitted?  In addition, if we delete the post while waiting for support, will they still be able to determine who the anonymous user was that made the post? 

It would still be useful if instructors or at least Canvas admins had access to this information too. It looks like Canvas admins that have permission to "Act as User" could potentially use a brute force approach if necessary to learn who each anonymous user is by acting as them.

The Reply Reporting is good for engaged instructors to review and handle potentially concerning posts.  However, if it is anonymous and they need to follow up with the user that posted it, it will take time to find out who the user is that made the post.  It would also be helpful if admin had a way to review reported replies and even more helpful if there was a way for teachers/admin to indicate action taken on the reported reply so these can be audited.  This way if there is an instructor that isn't as engaged with the course and/or doesn't seem the notification in a timely manner due to personal time off, then there is still a way for someone to be alerted and follow-up on these concerns.

Considering the enforced roll-out of the Discussion Re-Design and the potential concerns with Anonymous Discussions, it would be helpful for it to be a separate flag while it is still evaluated by schools and while you are still collecting feedback.  We are preparing to start enforcing it early since we don't want to confuse users with a change in the middle of their summer courses.  We have already run into issues with inappropriate posts without Anonymous Discussions and would prefer to avoid needing to go through Canvas Tech Support to handle situations that may arise with inappropriate posts on anonymous discussion boards.

[nwilson7]

@SamGarza1 There seem to be several blogs/posts where people are really concerned about how Anonymous discussions may play out.  I am fortunate to now work in higher-ed where rules and laws are very different but came from over a decade of being a K-12 LMS admin and want to fully echo the concerns (also still concerned about it in Higher-Ed).

If a student were to make any reference to self-harm or harming/threatening others those MUST be investigated immediately by law.  I am not sure which level of Canvas support can see these but if it is only level 2 or above, the amount of time it takes to hear back from them (this is not meant as a ding, just a fact) would not be the immediate action required by law. 

To make this a worst case situation: student says they are going to do something bad the next day, instructor either directly contacts Canvas or the admin for their institution does based on whatever support agreement the institution has and then Canvas starts looking into it (this also assumes someone reports or sees the post in a timely fashion).  It takes the several hours to hear back at which point the student has already followed through with their threat.  Is Instructure ready for that blowback?  I hate to do worst case scenario posts but unfortunately have been involved in situations much worse than this.

I think at minimum, local admins need to be able to see who posts what.  I also like the idea of a partial anonymous where students can't see who is posting but instructors can, which would also allow grading, both ideas already shared by others.

-Nick

[JacobGrande]

Absolutely agree with you on this. Admins really need quick access to data without relying on Canvas support, especially in urgent situations. It's surprising to see that there isn't an option to disable anonymous posts in Redesigned Discussions. Given Instructure's history of responding rapidly to feedback, I'm optimistic they'll make this feature optional soon as well.

-Jacob

[adam_c_voyton]

Hi @SamGarza1,

Thank you for providing clarification on this matter. Considering the significant risks associated with anonymous/partial discussions, I am in full support of the proposal to place them behind a feature flag. Allowing institutions the option to disable this feature would afford them greater control and help alleviate concerns regarding misuse or safety issues. Please consider my feedback as a strong advocate for implementing this change.

Could you elaborate on what would constitute sufficient feedback from users? From the comments on this page alone, it appears quite reasonable to transition the anonymous/partial discussions feature to an optional feature flag. This move would reduce organizational risk, ensure robust identity management within Canvas, and guarantee administrators access to pertinent data in their Canvas instance(s). With the enforced rollout date approaching rapidly, providing clarity and specifics would greatly aid clients in planning their strategies for managing this tool.

While I hesitate to draw parallels to Zoom bombing, the situation seems somewhat analogous, and it's perplexing why more flexibility isn't being offered in this regard. This approach places the burden of risk management squarely on the clients, which seems unfair. Given that this involves considering potentially negative outcomes, even if their probability is low, it warrants serious consideration. Being proactive and prepared for all eventualities, regardless of their likelihood, is essential.

I appreciate your attention to this feedback and your ongoing efforts to provide updates on this Instructure product and actively engage with the Canvas Community. 

[hesspe]

@SamGarza1 I've already said my piece on this, but this morning there was a meeting of our Educational Technology Group, and it was striking - and interesting - how different the concerns expressed were from what seems to be the prevailing concern here.  In short, the consensus of our group was that we hope the priority will remain protecting student anonymity.  In that regard, the question was raised with regard to "A support ticket would need to be submitted and we would provide the information."   In our cohort people wanted to be assured that such a ticket would be honored only if it came from Canvas Admins.  Can you clarify?

[RayBrooks]

I agree with what James, Nick and others have pointed out. Student anonymity is important, nevertheless, as Canvas Admins, we should have the ability to identify students who post as necessary in case of issues arising. This will help to continue to create a safe learning environment for students. We also need faster response times to this issue and highly suggest that the feature be made optional. Kindly take our concerns into consideration.