How do I publish or unpublish a discussion as an instructor?

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As an instructor, you can publish or unpublish a discussion in a course. Unpublished content is invisible to students, and graded discussions are excluded from grade calculations.

If the steps in this lesson do not match what is displayed in your course, learn how to publish and unpublish discussions in the Discussions Redesign interface.

Note: If you use Modules in your course and add a Discussion to a Module, please be aware that the state of the Module overrides the state of all module items. You may want to consider leaving Discussions unpublished until you are ready to publish the entire Module. For more information please see the Modules Draft State lesson.

Open Discussions

In Course Navigation, click the Discussions link.

View Status of All Discussions

On the Discussions index page, you can view the status of each discussion. Green icons indicate the discussion is published [1]. Gray icons indicate unpublished discussions [2]. You can change the status of a discussion by toggling the published and unpublished icons.

Publish Discussion

To publish a discussion, click the discussion's unpublished icon.

Unpublish Discussion

To unpublish a discussion, click the discussion's published icon [1].

Discussions with student submissions cannot be unpublished. The published icon for these discussions is lighter in color to indicate discussions that cannot be unpublished [2].

View Status within an Individual Discussion

Within individual discussions, the discussion status is shown next to the discussion settings.

Publish Discussion

To publish a discussion, click the discussion’s Publish button. The button will change from gray to green.

Unpublish Discussion

To unpublish a discussion, hover over the published button for the content item and view its status. If the discussion can be unpublished, the hover text will confirm you want to unpublish the discussion, and the button will change from green to red. Click the button to confirm.

Content with student submissions cannot be unpublished.

Discussions Student View

Students cannot see any of the actions involved with publish status, such as published and unpublished icons and setting icons. Students will only see published discussions.