More Discussion Redesign Feedback

snugent
Community Champion

I had chance to take a deeper look at the discussion redesign and I have some questions and feedback. 

Reporting - The report button appears in teacher view. If a teacher reports a post, does it go to the admin? If so, where in the admin can I see it? If this doesn't go to the admin, this option in teacher view may be confusing to instructors. Additionally, when the report option is selected in the options menu there is poor contrast between text and background color. See attachment below. 

Sidebar hell - I noticed that many instructors who have tried using discussion redesign and have posted feedback here are not happy with sidebar view of replies. I believe that our instructors would feel the same way. There has be a better way to display replies than popping them out on sidebar. This really breaks the flow and can be confusing in a discussion topic that has many replies. Also, please NOT get rid of the open/collapse thread option. This is extremely useful for teachers and students. Our instructors have been asking for a subject link option for a very long time. It would make more sense to have an option and close a thread with the subject line text as the open and close link. Another option they have asked for is the nested discussion topics as well. 

Subject Lines for Discussions

Teacher-created Discussion threads or sub-topics

Description Display - I really don't like that the grading information is displayed in small text that can be easily missed by students. Please make this information more prominent above the description. Also the Publish and edit options are much smaller and will also be easily missed by instructors. 

Reply language - I have stated this before but I have never liked that the word "reply" is used for both first post (or new thread) and replies to a thread. This has always been confusing to instructors and students. I do like that the first post reply displays as button. This does help to make the distinction between creating a new post/thread as opposed to replying to a thread. Please use a different word for first post/new thread. 

Quote language and function - I don't like that quote language is used by default when responding to a a message in a thread. This will be confusing for all users. Also, there will be times where the user doesn't want to quote the entire post. Allow users to select only the portion they wish to quote. It seems like separate quote option that is placed by reply option would be better. 

Anonymous Discussions - In instructor view it is noted above an anonymous discussion description that the instructor's profile will be visible in student view. However, if an instructor creates a reply, the profile will display anonymous in instructor view. I fear this will confuse instructors and they won't read the alert above the discussion description. 

Student Created Discussion topics/Discussion index options - When we first adopted Canvas, this caused mass confusion for many instructors. At the time instructors could not turn this option off because the options hadn't been added yet. This is still an issue for those instructors  who do wish to allow students to create discussion topics. This will especially be true with the new anonymous option. If the option to allow students to create discussion topics is on, students often get confused where they should post their reply. This can be really hard for an instructor who is requiring student to post in a graded discussion. Students will often come to the discussion page and click +discussion option at the top of the page to create a reply for the graded discussion. The student is confused and the instructor will be as well because the reply will not be in the graded discussion topic. This leads back to the confusing reply language used. 

Personal Discussion Options Issues - The personal setting, Manually mark replies as read, is not available in user account profile settings. I would prefer that it is available to user there as well as the discussion index page. That way if instructors choose to not display the discussion page to students, they would still be able to choose to change the personal setting. 

Allow student to edit and delete replies option - I have never liked that instructors can't split these options up. These options should be split apart and set at the individual topic level rather than for all discussions or at least instructors could make a change to this setting for an individual discussion topic. 

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