As an instructor, you can publish or unpublish a discussion that has enabled Discussions Redesign. Unpublished content is invisible to students and excluded from grade calculations.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 classic Discussions 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 You may want to consider leaving discussions unpublished until you are ready to publish the entire Module.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, learn more about publishing modules.
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. Published discussions display a Published icon [1]. Unpublished discussion display a Unpublished icon [2].
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To publish a discussion, click the discussion's Unpublished icon.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Discussions with student submissions cannot be unpublished. The Published icon for these discussions is lighter in color to indicate discussions that cannot be unpublished [2].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 published status displays in the Description field.
Publish Discussion
To publish a discussion, click the discussion’s Unpublished icon. The icon will change to display the Published icon.
Unpublish Discussion
To unpublish a discussion, click the discussion’s Published icon. The icon will change to display the Unpublished icon.
Note: Content with student submissions cannot be unpublished.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Students cannot see any of the actions involved with publish status, such as published and unpublished icons and setting icons.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 only see published discussions.