What are common terms used in the Instructure Community?

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This guide discusses common terms used in the Instructure Community.

Accepted Solution

An accepted solution is a reply to a question forum question that has been marked as the accepted answer. The question author and Community moderators can mark replies as an accepted solution.

Blog

A blog is a post created to share a story or insight. Blogs can be added to select interest groups. Some blogs may allow user comments.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks can be used to save quick links to a Community space or post. Bookmarked items can be accessed in your Community profile in the Subscriptions and Notifications tab.

Canvas Products

Canvas Products refer to the following Instructure products: Canvas LMS, Canvas Catalog, Canvas Commons, Canvas Credentials, Canvas Network, Canvas Studio, and Student Information Systems (SIS).

Category

A category is a landing page in the Instructure Community that includes options to navigate to more specific areas of that category. For example, the Canvas Instructor space is a category that allows users to navigate to Canvas Instructor resources, such as the Canvas Instructor blog, Canvas Instructor discussions, desktop and mobile guides, etc.

Community Moderators

Community moderators include members of the Instructure Community team and Community Coaches. Community moderators have access to mark question forum replies as accepted solutions as well as edit and remove posts. Community moderators also determine which idea conversations can be opened for conversation.

Ideas and Themes

Ideas and Themes covers the entire feedback and discussion process between our community and our product teams.

Ideas are items of feedback submitted by our global community. An idea must include a problem statement and proposed solution. Ideas are reviewed by our product teams and may be added to an applicable theme

Themes are overarching product outcomes that our product teams are exploring. Many ideas may be associated with one theme. Users can vote and comment on themes as our product teams move through the discovery process.

Instructure Live

Instructure Live is a space in the Instructure Community in which Community users and Instructure employees can host or participate in live events.  

Interest Groups

Interest groups are Community spaces in which users can connect with other Community members and discuss similar interests, language, or roles and share knowledge.

Knowledge Base

A knowledge base (also called a tribal knowledge base) is a collection of guides that discuss and organize information about a product's features.

Labels

Labels are used to organize posts, guides, and idea conversations. For example a question post about Canvas LMS may include the "Canvas" label.

Some Community spaces include pre-defined labels that an author can added to their post, guide, or idea conversation. Unlike tags, pre-defined labels are managed by Community Moderators and/or interest group admins for consistency.

Likes

Likes are a way to show support for a post that you find useful or important.

My Feed

My Feed is a space where you can view your Instructure Community notifications, latest posts from Community users you follow, and new content from your subscriptions.

Private Messenger

Private Messenger allows you to connect with other Community members by sending messages to them in the Instructure Community.

Question Forum

A Question Forum, also known as a Q&A, allows users to post and reply to questions about Instructure products. There is a separate question forum available for each of the products in Instructure's family of products.

Question forums are a great way to collaborate with others and share your perspective and expertise.

RSS Feed

An RSS Feed allows you to view the latest content from spaces in the Instructure Community as well as other sites you visit, all in one place.

To use RSS, you must have a feed reader, such as Google Reader, MyYahoo, the Live Bookmarks feature of Firefox, etc. You can then subscribe to an RSS feed in an Instructure Community board, blog, thread, or message by selecting the Subscribe to RSS Feed link from the Options menu. RSS feeds display in your feed reader and display new content when added.

Subscriptions

A subscription is a way to follow updates made to a page or post. You can follow a page or post by clicking the Subscribe link from the page or post's Options menu. Subscription updates display in your Community profile's My Subscriptions tab.

Tags

A tag is a single keyword or phrase that describes the topic, theme, or subject of a post. When authoring a blog or idea conversation, you can add multiple tags to make your post more searchable. Commas must be used between tags.

Topics

In the Instructure Community, topics can refer to discussions created in a discussion forum or interest group.