Discussion Anonymity + Moderation Feedback Request

[Katrina-Hess]

[Update Aug 18, 2021: added survey link for Anonymity, Moderation, Reporting]

Hi everyone, we are so excited to start collecting your feedback for Anonymity + Moderation features in Discussions. We have a couple of surveys lined up to get your feedback and share upcoming designs. 

Up first is “Creating a New Discussion Survey” to ensure we have simplified how you create Discussion topics. Next week, we will update this post and activate the link for "Anonymity, Moderation, Reporting Survey".

• Aug 11, 2021: Creating a New Discussion (3 min survey)
• Aug 18, 2021: Anonymity, Moderation, Reporting (5 min survey)

Best, Katrina + Allison

[Katrina-Hess]

Best, Katrina + Allison

[Hildi_Pardo]

Very cool!  Love all these sneak peeks and surveys!

[dkpst5]

I've passed this on to some people I know are excited for the idea of anonymous discussions. Thanks for raising it outside of the user group!

There wasn't room in the Aug 11th poll, but I wanted to note that accordions like shown in advanced are often seen as bad design. Expand/toggle each individually (starting with all out, or the most common already expanded), rather than "collapse others when one is expanded".

[wdiazbrown]

Hi, I don't know if this is the correct place to ask for this, but in the Speed Grader could you rewrite the program so I can send out a blanket comment to each student in such a way so that they are all able to see it, but they don't know that other students can also see the same comment?  

Thank you

William Diaz-Brown

Coastline Community College

[kozbirn]

I want the color gauges out of the discussion rubric. The computer has no business evaluating the students.  That's the teacher's job.  I want students concentrating on comments from me and details of edits, not looking for green or red evaluation bars.  The interference of the computer in the commentary process that is the domain of the instructor violates academic freedom.

[kozbirn]

I would like students to resubmit work, but I also want to see the original work with my commentary/editorial input with the re-submission.  Canvas should keep the original submitted work as well as provide the revised work.  I need both copies to help the student see the comparison and so improve.

[olian]

It would be good to include that teachers themselves should not be able to turn off the anonymization. That function should maybe be controlled via some kind of admin role. I think that would solve a lot of the anonymisation problem. This would also be helpful for example when grading scanned documents in SpeedGrader. 

[b_w_reid]

Hi, I agree with @olian Whilst we are interested in the ability for students to post anonymously, we would very much prefer for this to be controlled at an admin level for all courses. We currently have moderation turned off for assignments insitutionally and we would like to do the same for any discussion enhancements.

[ChrisDavis]

has there been forward motion re: anonymity and discussions since surveys began last August? i have interested faculty that would love to see this. thanks

[DaveMcIntosh]

I'm using the experimental version of this anonymity feature on Canvas. Great, thanks a lot! Been waiting a long time for this. Some students contribute so much more when they're not worrying what everyone will think of them, and gain confidence that way. One thing which would make it 'complete' is a moderation feature that Blackboard used to have: teachers could, if necessary, by a convoluted series of actions, see the identity of the student who had posted. I disagree with the earlier comment on this page that suggests teachers shouldn't be able to do this. I need to be able to do it in very occasional cases such as when a student may have used their anonymity to be abusive to others, or break the other rules of discussion in some way. It works well and students can be made aware from the outset that they waive their anonymity from me (the teacher) if they break the rules - not a problem otherwise.

[DaveMcIntosh]

So in connection with my earlier reply, basically I'm a bit mystified by two things:

1) Why can replies be 'reported' for being offensive etc., but not original posts?

2) When an offensive reply is reported, an email comes through to me the teacher, but all I can do is delete it - I can't find out who the student was in order to have a word with them (as per my earlier comments.)

I also agree with the other comments about making this available on a mobile device - what's happened here since 2021? It's a very good feature for encouraging discussion, should be expanded.