Add more distinction between discussion forum posts to distinguish them from each other.

(7)
It would be very helpful if discussion forum posts could be darker around the edges to show a distinction of the post as well as the reply to a post being more indented.  It would also be helpful if there was more space between the replies, because it can be difficult for users to separate the discussions in their mind to know which post they are in fact responding to.  A student mentioned having a hard time separating out which post is separated, and I can see how it could be hard for someone with eye problems as well.  If students could "name" their reply to the original post that would be great, as a way to mimic the thread style forums.

 

Thanks for your consideration!

🔎 This idea has been archived. While this idea isn't open for comments, it is an important part of Instructure’s idea conversations and development process. Contributions like this are valuable as Instructure prioritizes work on new or existing features.

86 Comments
lmd5
Community Novice

Jeff - Yes. PSU is migrating from Canvas and this is just a first semester of the rollout.  PSU World Campus has about 170 courses in the first semester, so this is just a small portion of the students using it.  Overall, the feedback has been very positive.  They also had a lot of great discussions on this topic on their twitter feed as well.

Jeff_F
Community Champion

First impressions mean a great deal and you are doing a great service by capturing these.

We finished our migration by May, 2015 and the experience since has been nearly wholly positive. We did have a group of faculty elect to discontinue using a third-party integration for Wikis/ blogs/journals/discussions as there was no speedgrader or rubric linkage.  That is the only bump in the road that stands out.  I mention this only to note that alternatives to the Canvas Discussions exist, and while such tools provide benefits, their use comes with a cost and loss of functionality.

bjn151
Community Novice

Thanks, Allison!  What a great idea to get some UI design ideas from the crowd. 

I'll be using Canvas for an orientation course at Penn State this summer (already using it in my upper levels) and I'm very concerned about making sure I conduct the discussions in a way which is as easy to follow as possible as many of the students will be new to Penn State, new to online learning, and certainly new to Canvas.  I wonder if you or anyone else following this discussion thread have suggestions for the best way to structure discussions.  Generally, we have a handful of students responding directly to an assignment prompt and the remainder of the students replying on those posts each week.  Total enrollment is small, maybe 20 or less for the summer.  Should I start the thread each week and have them reply?  Or, should I let them do their own threads and then archive those as we go so the list of them doesn't become too long?  Are there other options. 

What I wouldn't give for FOLDERS in the discussions in Canvas. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

lewisale
Community Champion

I used Canvas last semester for three online classes, and I decided I had to make changes to the way I used the discussion forums due to the forum length.  This semester I divided up  "whole class" discussions by last name (A-L) (M-Z).  This significantly reduced the length of the forum, thus less scrolling.  Students are more likely to scroll to the last post when the length of the forum is manageable.  I encouraged students to view posts from the other forum. 

Students also enjoyed the small group discussion feature. 

A benefit from the way discussion forums are structured in Canvas is that students are more likely to view more posts because posts are on the same page.  The benefit in my opinion is that they see more ideas and thoughts from other students.  I noticed with Blackboard discussion threads that some of the threads may only have a few views by other students.  This created more of an environment of isolation whereby some students did not feel as a part of their learning community.  In the Blackboard threads, I did more work to show my presence to students.  Depending on my role in a discussion forum, with Canvas I can simply show my presence by just posting a few times in a "whole class" forum.  All students "see me".  In Blackboard discussion threads, unless a student opened up the thread I posted in, the student may not "see me" as present in the forums.

If we have 20 separate threads for each student, it is unlikely that every student will view more than a handful of threads.  This is what my observations were in Blackboard as an Instructor and as a student.

lewisale
Community Champion

Thanks Allison!

bdoran
Community Contributor

Allison,

Jin An made a wonderful post previously and supplied a link to their blog that has some screenshot based on custom work designed by the user:

Canvas Discussion Visual Separation » jinsungpsu

Screen-Shot-2016-02-09-at-1.57.38-PM-768x943.png

hrutherford
Community Explorer

Is there any way that we can make discussion threads less challenging to follow? In a previous LMS all the discussions that were replies to an initial post were threaded and one would need to click on the initial post to read through the discussion thread.  Now, the indenting for the discussion thread is not easily distinguishable and a discussion conversation scrolls on forever.  Is there a way to not view all threads at once? Is there a way to have a certain number of responses and then click to a next page to keep reading responses? I'm just trying to find ways to make it less confusing for the student and faculty to follow the conversation.

japhill
Community Novice

Hi Allison,

Just for clarification purposes... We should not expect any changes to the discussion feature for at least 6 months?

Thanks,

Julia

allison
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @japhill ​, that is correct. We are focused on some other features right now so I don't expect to make any significant enhancements to discussions during the next six months. That said, I love this discussion because it's helping me to identify some of the key problems:

  • Discussion threads are hard to follow
  • It's hard to see where one thread ends and a new one begins
  • It's hard to tell whether a question at any level in the threading hierarchy has been answered
  • It's difficult to navigate between sub-topics inside a discussion.
  • Etc.

We'll archive this for now, but please feel free to continue adding your comments and insights. Also, if there is one particularly problem that stands out as the most important to solve FIRST, feel free to post a product idea devoted to that specific problem.

lewisale
Community Champion

Heather, I have been separating my discussion forums, which has been helpful with maintaining the conversation scrolling.  I usually do this by last name (A-L) (M-Z).  I also use small groups, which students have enjoyed.  The one thing I did not like about the traditional threads like in Blackboard is that it was difficult for me as the Instructor to connect the conversation to the whole class. A student could say something in one thread that I clarify in his/her thread, but other students would not see it because students do not read all of the threads.  I would then need to create a discussion forum wrap-up announcement so I could provide students with highlights of points made by students including any clarifying information. I really like the idea of open discussion forums.  This I believe encourages students to read more posts than they would in a blackboard thread.  I am seeing increased discussion forum interactions in Canvas versus my experience with using Blackboard discussion forums.

-al

hrutherford
Community Explorer

We have tried separating the discussion forum into small groups, but even

then depending on the topic they can get kind of lengthy still. We are

seeing a harder time with the discussions now, under this format than in

Moodle because students are having a hard time following the forum as there

isn't as much of an indent to show what conversation goes with which theme

and/or they do not seem to understand threaded discussion forums in this

format.

Heather

On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 8:55 PM, lewisale@missouri.edu <

traciebosket
Community Champion

This is the # one complaint that our instructors give is that the discussion board is very difficult to use. That it would be easier to format something like the pic below. The topic with it's posts could be in a separate box. Thank you very much for considering this one!

Discussion Boards.png 

dxj5152
Community Novice

I too agree that this needs to be added. I will check back when voting is open.

Doug

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @dxj5152 , just to clarify, voting on this feature has already been opened, and was closed on February 3, 2016. Inasmuch as the idea has already landed on the radar of the product team, it's neither necessary to resubmit it nor to reinstate voting.

dxj5152
Community Novice

Thanks for the clarification. I submitted the comment because someone in one of the classes I was taking asked us to do this Smiley Happy

image.jpeg

I did not note that the voting had already closed.

ephraimross1
Community Contributor

Allison, you asked for our own ideas and sketches of an improved UI for the Canvas Discussions... honestly, I think the Jive discussion approach you're reading this on is pretty stellar. I would not mind if canvas discussions looked like these at all!

ephraimross1
Community Contributor

I've been working on a similar update at our institution. It involves one simple update to the global stylesheet (css), and here's what the results currently look like:

Topic_ PEL Discussion.png

Here is the relevant code to add to the global css:

     .replies {

           padding-left: 7px;

           border-left: solid #f2f2f2 16px;

           }

     .discussion-read-state-btn {

           top: 32px;

           }

And that's it! Hope that's helpful for those of you anxious to have a more 'threaded' visual cue in your own Canvas instances!

hrutherford
Community Explorer

Thank you for the suggestion of what you're doing. I'll have to give it a

try for our discussion forums.

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 2:06 PM, ephraimross@achs.edu <

ephraimross1
Community Contributor

Oops, it turned out that approach resulted in a double indent of sorts (see below), because Canvas automatically injects 30 more pixels of padding-left into each response layer (see below):

Topic_ PEL Discussion4.png

Here's the updated code to address this, along with the pictured results:

.replies {

     padding-left: 7px;

     border-left: solid #f2f2f2 16px;

     }

.discussion-read-state-btn {   

      top: 32px;

     }

div.entry-content {  

     padding-left:0px !important;

     }

Topic_ PEL Discussion-1.png

DaleDrees
Community Champion

Love it  @ephraimross1 ​! Thanks for sharing - so excited to try this!