Archive discussions without making unavailable or deleting.

[DanaPerlman]

I find that students sometimes need to post a quick question that can be answered and then deleted.  It would be great to have a way to archive these types of discussions by searchable title during the term but not have to wade through them in a discussion board.

[Naomi]

Hi @DanaPerlman,

In your course, are students creating new discussions to post their questions or are they posting questions within an existing discussion? If they are create new discussions, is that functionality necessary for your course? If not, you could disable students from creating new discussions and create a Q&A discussion where they can post course questions. Would doing something like that solve for what you're looking for? If not, could you provide more information?

Naomi

[DanaPerlman]

Hi @Naomi,

We have a general discussion area we call the "water cooler" where students can start a thread with questions, news, celebration, frustration, suggestions, etc.  Some of these discussions should remain throughout the course, but many are resolved.  The "unread" and subsequent "see in conversation" option is VERY helpful (awesome, amazing"...consider a skip to next "unread" quick link), but it would still be great to have a searchable archive for full-semester discucssion boards so that students can search for previously asked and answered questions while still having a live board to ask or post new information.  Separately, we have discussion boards for each module - these are more like seminar discussion.  The water cooler is more like the conversation that would happen just before class, during a break, or just after class in an in person setting.

Here's an example"  A student notes that the voice over PPT is not playing for them and the faculty looks at the issue and then posts a short "how to" video.  The student confirms the issue is resolved.  It would be great to archive this rather have to wade through it every time.  Make sense?

I find that discussion boards serve different purposes and so having varied ways of working in them would be helpful.

Dana

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.