Missing Feature: Ability to view a single student's posts across all discussions

[LauraCira]

Hi all - new to the community so I hope this is the right place to post this suggestion.

Many of our faculty use discussions/forums as conversation starters for class, and thus give involvement in discussions a single participation grade. So what they really want is the ability to search for all postings by Student A, across all discussions, to review the quality and thoughtfulness of their posts. (As we all know, prolific posters/repliers don't always contribute meaningfully to a topic, so a stat showing how many posts they've completed isn't always the best metric of work.)

The search bar across the top of the Discussions page appears to allow instructors to search by student, but alas, silently fails when used that way. (apparently it only searches "authors", and an author is the one kicking off the discussion topics, usually the instructor.)

We would love to have this feature (which was available in our previous LMS) as it is extremely useful when grading quality, not just quantity, of student involvement.

[Stef_retired]

Welcome to the Instructure Community, @LauraCira ! What you've described is a long-standing feature idea at  See all of a student's posts together. One of our members has created a Canvancement that users can implement on their own (it's easier to install and use than one might think on first look):  How to Count Student Discussion Posts.

[LauraCira]

Hi Stephanie. I'm a little confused by the response you gave - sorry about that. The response contains a link to an active 5-year-old feature conversation that has yet to be resolved by Canvas (which does not bode well - they don't seem very focused on pedagogical enhancements), and How to Count Student Discussion Posts is just a way to view a raw count of activity. Unfortunately, neither link helps solve our problem.