Discussion Redesign Update

SamGarza1 · ‎12-01-2023

Hello Community! Over the last two years since this feature group was created, our team has released many updates to the Discussion/Announcement Redesign feature preview. Taking user feedback from this group, the community as a whole, and internally to ensure that what we created didn’t have any loss in functionality but also provided new functionality that our users needed. With our recent deploys which include flexible viewing, inline and split view, and edit history we feel that now the time has come to enforce the redesign so everyone has access.

I’ve included a list of all the functionality that currently exists in the legacy version and what’s new below to give a comprehensive overview of the redesign.

Discussions Redesign

To start we wanted to ensure that there was no loss of functionality between the old and new experience. Users will still be able to set up discussions in the same way with the same requirements.

Discussions

Users must post before seeing replies
Reply posts can be marked as read or unread
Discussion time stamp edit display
Multiple Due Dates (addition: individual student names are displayed instead of the total number of students)
Available From and Until Dates

Previous/Next buttons for Modules
Group Discussions
Peer Review
Add to student to-do list
View deleted posts (change: deleted posts always show)
Rubrics

Once we were sure that no functionality would be lost, we shifted our focus to new functionality that we could add. This includes:

Improved search with highlighting
Edit History
Flexible viewing options: Inline and split view
Role Labels
Quoting
Reply Reporting and notifications to Instructors
Full and partial anonymous graded discussions
Sort options (Newest to Oldest, Oldest to Newest)
Filtering (All, Unread, Read)

Announcements

While Announcements is also getting a facelift to improve accessibility and provide design consistency, no functionality has been changed.

How to experience the redesign?

Before July 20, 2024, users will need to turn on the Discussions/Announcements Redesign feature flag. If this has been turned off at the account/root level you’ll need to contact your admin to enable it.

After July 20, 2024, the redesign will be enabled for everyone - no migration or further action is needed. All existing discussions and announcements will simply be updated with the new UI and have access to all the new functionality.

We value your continued feedback and are looking forward to taking this next step. More information can be found in the Product Blog and the Feature Group Knowledge Base.

Best, Sam

kailey · ‎07-03-2024

@SamGarza1 While reviewing the 7/20/24 release notes and testing within Beta, I noticed that the Edit interface for discussions is drastically changing once 7/20/24 rolls around (and I'm not talking about from Classic Discussions to Discussions Redesign). For one, the Ungraded Discussions Assign To item. Also, the Create and Edit Page for Discussions is updated to InstUI item. Both these items will change the look and feel to the Discussions Redesign Edit page. The latter section in the release notes doesn't go into specifics or include screenshots, but I'm assuming it's all the differences I see in Beta now compared to what I see in Prod.

Our team is in the final stages of developing a Discussions Redesign tutorial video for our faculty. These upcoming changes to Discussions essentially renders our video useless, given we will need to re-record content. Your new Discussions Redesign video will also be outdated after 7/20.

Due to all the constant changes up until the enforcement date, it gives little to no time for institutions to properly prepare and transition users. This is just another example of Instructure not really understanding what their customers need to prepare users for Canvas changes.

It's really unacceptable to say that all new feature development and major changes were complete, just to see that the 7/20 release will include even more changes to the UI that wasn't previously announced (at least not that I've seen).

We were forced to turn on Discussions Redesign between our Spring and Summer quarters (we've already received negative feedback and it's only been a couple weeks) and now Discussions is going to change even further. With Instructure still working on many bug fixes (some very critical and affects grading), active development/add-ons to Discussions (e.g.,checkpoints), and trying to figure out how to move forward with some features (e.g., sorting, one-click read, etc), an enforcement date should not have been announced until after bugs and active development are actually completely resolved. There have also been too many times where:

A bug gets "fixed" and then reintroduced later on.
- Example: The bug where users need to refresh the page for edited content to display was fixed in March 2024. It was then reintroduced and is now an outstanding bug. The bug is listed on the known-issues page now, but only mentions Inline View when it actually affects both Inline and Split-Screen view.
A bug fix results in a new bug or doesn't actually resolve the reported issue.
- Example: The bug where the entire course is brought into SpeedGrader. A fix was released and then rolled back. It is fixed now, but only after I (and maybe other customers) reported that the original fix did not actually fix the entire scope of the problem.

I'm being told that some of my existing bug reports will be resolved by the enforcement date (some only a couple days before), but how can we have confidence that the fix will not have other negative consequences as we've experienced many times before?

hesspe · ‎07-05-2024

@kailey( @SamGarza1 ),

Thanks for pointing out the change in the Edit interface, Something I noticed when reviewing it is that it appears that the option for anonymous peer review has been removed. If that observation is correct, I wonder if this was intentional? (I checked to see if perhaps the change was that all peer reviews are anonymous, but that is not the case.)

Nancy_Webb_CCSF · ‎07-05-2024

@hesspe , did Discussions Redesign originally include anonymous peer reviews? It's not available in classic discussions so would have been a nice addition, another positive change for the redesign. (Anonymous peer review is available in other types of graded assignments, just not discussions.)

hesspe · ‎07-05-2024

@Nancy_Webb_CCSF Oops, you're right. It appears anonymous Peer Reviews were never part of the redesign, nor, as you note, were they part of "classic."