Make date/time stamp on discussions visible to students

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(2)

A discussion post doesn't include a date and time stamp! I see now that replies to discussions have a date stamp. There's also a "last reply" date stamp in the discussions overview, but as far as I can tell, there's no way to know when the original post was made. 

As posts with new replies seem to be bumped to the top, there's absolutely no way to know whether this is a new discussion or even a question asked by this semester's students, as some professors keep the discussions between semesters. 

I refuse to believe that I'm the only one missing this feature and consider it a necessity for a discussions board to work, so I ask that the option that my school must've enabled to omit date stamps be removed, or at least not default as there's no reason to disable date stamps.canvas.png

6 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open

@HakonLindholm 

We've moved your idea forward for further discussion after making a slight edit to the title; the date and time indicating when a new discussion has been created are visible to the instructor, but not to students.

HakonLindholm
Community Member

@Stef_retired I see. Is there a way for the instructor to make it visible to students? What is the reason that it's only visible to instructors? This implies that discussions are to be student to instructor only since I can only be expected to keep track of my own posts.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@HakonLindholm There isn't an instructor setting that makes the time and date a discussion topic was created visible to students.

HakonLindholm
Community Member

@Stef_retired Thanks for the reply. I hope that you or someone else can tell me what the thought behind this is, as I can think of no good reason for this to be hidden to students. One reason could be that the discussion section is meant only for timeless discussions and not as more of a message board. So that in the screenshot i linked above, "Travel time for a photon" and "Double slit experiment" are timeless/purely theoretical and there's no need to know what was said when, and "Midterm curriculum" and "Lecture Video" are not posts intended for the discussions section. 

I don't really think that this is the intention. Because the discussion section is missing this crucial feature, we use other tools such as padlet or piazza for discussions for most courses. This is partly because those tools allow for anonymity. However, I stopped using Canvas discussions the moment I replied to a 7 month old thread which asked a question about "this weeks assignments". 

Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

This is a very good idea, @HakonLindholm.

I believe in the Discussions redesign, the instructor's original discussion does have a date/time stamp that students can see, including any editing date as well.  At least it shows in student view and also if I masquerade as a student.

 

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
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.