Disable Students Creating Discussions

[lhenson]

Is there a way to disable the option for students to be able to create discussions.  We want them to respond to the discussions and reply to each others, but we would rather not have them have the ability to begin a discussion for the class on their own.

[kona · Accepted solution]

Yes, you can do this from the Discussions page (click on the gear icon - upper right - and then uncheck the option to allow students to create discussion posts) OR from your course Settings (click on Settings, scroll down, click on the "more options" link, then uncheck the option to allow students to create discussions. You only have to make this change in one place and it will automatically update it in the other.

[lhenson]

Thank you so much.  Is there a way to set this on the Admin side for the whole organization?

[kona]

Unfortunately there isn't a setting on the front end (admin side) of Canvas that would allow you to do this, but it might be possible through some back-end programming or javascript of some type.

[lhenson]

Ok - Thanks.  Just thought I would ask.

[kona]

I wish it was a global setting! We emphasize the importance of turning this off during Canvas training and I also send out reminders to faculty each semester reminding them to turn this off! For the most part this has worked pretty well and when courses get copied from semester to semester this setting does stick (so you don't have to go in every semester and uncheck it if the course you copied already had it unchecked).

[ajkoop]

Hi, Kona. I just wanted to reach out and see if this is still the case. I am also interested in toggling off the ability for students to create discussions by default. Thanks.

[MS-CPS]

Like an API call?

[MS-CPS]

I am here in 2024 and I would like this submitted as a feature request. By default, we don't want our students to have the permissions to create their own discussion topics, organize their own groups, attach files to those discussions.

[rodger-ling]

One of our students seems to have found a loophole.  We have the ability to create discussions disabled in the class, which should force them to use "reply" to respond in the proper graded forum, yet if a student clicks on PEOPLE, then clicks "visit" in their group and clicks the DISCUSSION item there, they can then create a forum and post there (where no one is likely to see it).

That whole "Group" area is very confusing to me, since you get a similar (but not the same!) menu along the left--kind of bizarre to create an alternative reality with no clear indication beyond the breadcrumbs along the top (and the slightly different menu) that you're not in where you used to be...and there's not a "exit" button to be seen!  It took me a while to learn to get back to the real world using the breadcrumbs.

[canvas_support8]

We have had to disable groups for this very reason. Once students are in a group they can communicate with anyone in the group freely, and there is no way of monitoring this unless you are also in the group. So teachers do not have the ability to create groups. We use sections to achieve a similar outcome to groups, but with some drawbacks.

[miltology]

What a great workaround regarding making new sections instead of discussions. We are planning to do the same. Any advice on this before we get started? 

[j_willis]

I agree. There should be separate settings to "enable and disable" pages like you can from the class settings. For example, I want my students to see the pages and discussions, but not people or files when in their group. 

[rodger-ling]

So, it just happened again--much chaos and confusion because students created their own discussion forums in their groups which were not tied to a grade column.  I suppose we just have to tell everyone NOT to click on the "add" button.  Please, Canvas, give instructors the ability to customize as needed to make your system work the way we desire!