Canvas Discussions Update: Our Latest Improvements

[SamGarza1]

I wanted to share a final update on the Discussions/Announcements Redesign before it becomes officially enforced on July 20th. It's been incredibly rewarding to see all the feedback and engagement over the past nine months since we announced this enforcement. We were even fortunate enough to collaborate with the University of Minnesota on a usability study, which provided invaluable insights not only into discussions but for Canvas as a whole. 

So what will be available before the redesign is enforced?

Thanks to the valuable feedback from our community and insightful conversations with our users, we've updated the sort order. Posts will now be sorted by the post date of the top-level reply, matching the legacy behavior and preventing posts from shifting order. This change will be implemented in the July 17th deploy.

We've also moved Reported Replies to its own feature option. While we believe in the value of this feature, we understand that not all will feel comfortable in having this option for users, so we want to make it an appropriate setting to allow for choice/customization. As an initial improvement, we've made the Reported Reply notification setting available to instructors in their account level notifications and not just in their course level notifications.

We're introducing an option to provide a one-click "mark as read/unread" experience. Instructors have shared that the current process added extra clicks and time to their grading workflows. To streamline this, we're adding a new button at the bottom of posts, allowing users to quickly mark a post as read or unread with a single click. This improvement will be implemented in the July 17th deploy.

Previously, the search feature in discussions would highlight text but inadvertently remove all HTML tags and styling from the original post. We've resolved this issue, ensuring that no styling is removed during text highlighting. This improvement will be included in the July 17th deploy.

You can now edit anonymous or partially anonymous discussions before a reply has been posted in the thread. This aligns with our approach to anonymity across other areas of Canvas. This enhancement was part of the July 3rd deploy.

Our goal is continued improvement to meet the needs of our users. With this in mind, what can you expect to see shortly after enforcement?

We're nearly finished with the option to disallow threaded replies. Once released, users will see a 'Disallow threaded replies' checkbox when creating or editing a discussion. We anticipate this feature will be available in the July 31st deploy.

Enhancing overall usability is our priority. In our effort to modernize discussions, we may have made things a bit too sleek. We're planning to reintroduce lines between posts to help visually distinguish them more clearly.

And there’s more we’re still looking into like adding more options to expand and collapse posts, improvements to @mention capabilities, support for custom roles pills, and more. 

As always, we value your feedback and appreciate your understanding and are excited about the future enhancements we’ll bring to Discussions.

[TrinaAltman]

Hi @SamGarza1 - 

Thank you for this update. I would have loved to have seen some of these long-requested changes before many of us had to enable Discussions Redesign by default for our summer courses to avoid an interface change in the middle of a term. As it stands now, our users will experience some significant (albeit desired) changes just as we are entering summer finals, so that's unfortunate. But it is what it is and I am glad Instructure is finally incorporating end user feedback on these items. That should help our fall transition go more smoothly.

Question: At this point, release and deploy notes are still referencing Discussions/Announcements Redesign: Release Change Log for changes, which has much less information than we usually see in the release/deploy notes. After the enforcement on July 20th, will Discussions/Announcements Redesign changes be included in the regular release/deploy notes that typically have more details and sometimes screen shots, etc.?

Thank you,
Trina

[faith]

Howdy @SamGarza1 ,

I think all these very recent updates and bug fixes are very positive things and a welcome sign that there is active development happening with a core tool, especially with useful feedback as part of the process.  This is something that we have wanted to see for a long time.  Thank you and the Discussions team for all the work and good communications.

As @TrinaAltman mentions regarding her institution, we too committed to switching over to the Redesign prior to the start of our summer terms for fear that it would be too disruptive to wait for the enforcement date and have instructors and students see any changes DURING an academic term. I feel that it would be more advantageous for all of us to have a more relaxed enforcement date given the not-so-minor changes coming with the July deploys.  I too would have liked to have known that there would be several changes happening to discussions over the summer before we committed to the new tool.  Perhaps the enforcement date should come after the stability date.  I think this was an important realization that Instructure had with the New Quizzes tool when the enforcement date was lifted - something I think we all appreciated.

Again, thanks for all the work.  I look forward to seeing how Discussions matures as well as other core tools.

-Steve Faith, UC Davis

[venitk]

It would be amazing if the font size remained consistent for all the levels of replies, and for depth of reply to be indicated some other clear way than by reducing font size. 

[kroeninm]

Yes, @venitk, thanks for highlighting this.  Until we started using the Discussions for all courses I didn't notice the discrepancy in my testing.  Ideally the default size for the initial response is the same for the replies, it's much easier to adjust a browser to view all text equally sized to fit the user's abilities that way and I already have had one comment about this from faculty though we've just started using the New Discussions.

Melanie

[profmayfield]

I've been excitedly informing faculty that they will soon be able to assign two due dates to discussions - one for the initial post and one for the reply. Then, I didn't see it in any of the redesign videos or articles. Now I find out that Canvas didn't add that to the new updates as promised?? I feel deceived. Please explain why something we've asked for since 2015 and were told is forthcoming is still not available.

[kroeninm]

Hi @SamGarza1,

Can you clarify the 1-click change to mark responses as read/unread? 

As of today (the 9th), I can click the button to the left of each reply to mark it as read, which works well, but your description was that "To streamline this, we're adding a new button at the bottom of posts".

Will there be an additional change on the 20th?

Thanks!

Melanie

[cmuir]

@venitk I've submitted an idea called "Show threading of posts in discussions", and just updated it to include a mention of the font size issue as a problem.

[hisham_attia]

Looking forward to see the new updates.

[kailey]

@kroeninm The Mark as Read link is currently available on Beta for you to see. I've attached a screenshot of what it'll look like. This change should be coming to production with the 7/17/24 deploy. 

[kroeninm]

Thanks @kailey I love that revision(!), you can still just click on the dot but it's easier to toggle between read/unread and is more intuitive with the text link.  

[Jeff_F]

@SamGarza1 , all - I am not seeing mention of the noted discussion changes in the July 17th deploy notes. Am I missing them?

These being a change in the sort order, reported replies, and the new marked as read button.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Releases/Canvas-Deploy-Notes-2024-07-17/ta-p/608163

Thanks, Jeff

ps. Instructurecon was great!  AWESOME!

[audra_agnelly]

In the Announcements Options we see "Allow Participants to Comment" as an option that is checked by default. We have and always have had the "Disable Comments on Announcements" option enabled at the root account level, so this option shouldn't even appear to users much less be checked by default. When I leave this option checked on a new announcement I do not see the reply button when I masquerade as a student. This inconsistency is confusing to instructors.

[baldwinsh]

Sam,

Am I to understand that in the discussions redesign, newest initial posts will not be visible at the top of a discussion board? This was a feature that instructors at my institution really liked when they used the Discussions/Announcements Redesign feature. 

If you are opting to make it with the oldest initial posts on top (like has traditionally been in a Canvas discussion), would you consider giving instructors an option of oldest posts first or newest posts first?

[SamGarza1]

Hi @Jeff_F, 

I believe those changes were still listed in the change log for the feature instead of the deploy notes. Going forward any new changes will be in the deploy and release notes. 

[SamGarza1]

Hi @audra_agnelly , 

Thank you for raising this as an issue. I'm going to work with my team to clarify the experience and identify what we missed. 

[SamGarza1]

Hi @baldwinsh , 

Yes we did change the sort order back to how it worked in legacy. This decision was made after feedback from users that discussions were unusable for them. We are beginning to discover how to add more sort options to enrich the experience. 

[baldwinsh]

@SamGarza1  Thank you for the clarification! I am glad that you are looking for ways to add sort options. I think that will be very useful. I am disappointed that you're going back to the legacy version of sorting, but it sounds like more people like it that way. Back to endless scrolling for me when there are whole-class discussions happening!

[SeanPBA]

Hello @SamGarza1,

I am posting here because of two related issues I discovered with the Announcements Redesign, and Canvas support was unable to clarify if/how these issues will be addressed. Some of these issues seem to be more related to product design rather than software bugs, so that is why I am posting here.

After posting an announcement, whether it is posted right away or delayed, the following warning message appears when going back to edit the announcement: "Students have already submitted to this discussion, so group settings cannot be changed." This message appears directly above the "Available from" heading.

Problem 1: An announcement is called a discussion

I understand that the API endpoint for discussions and announcements, as well as their data models, are effectively the same. However, even mentioning "discussion" in the Announcements UI causes a lot of confusion for our faculty. Discussions and announcements have different purposes, they are in different locations, and they perform different functions for a course. I would argue that most users conceptually see them differently. When I mentioned this to Canvas support, they reiterated that announcements are discussions (which I understand), but the problem is that most users probably do not understand this. 

Problem 2: The warning appears even when no one has replied

The warning message appears when no one has replied to an announcement, and it mentions group settings, of which there are none for announcements. Therefore, the message should not even be displayed.

Additional Suggestion:

The following message also appears at the top of the announcement edit view: Notifications will not be sent retroactively for announcements created before publishing your course or before the course start date. You may consider using the Delay Posting option and set to publish on a future date.

I recommend changing the last sentence to the following: You may consider setting an "Available from" date to publish this announcement on a future date.

Given that the "Delay Posting" checkbox is gone, I recommend removing that language to not confuse users.

[kailey]

@SeanPBA I reported these exact issues to Instructure on 7/2/24 when I first noticed them in Beta. Instructure then proceeded with releasing the code with these problems, despite being aware of them. Please see my comment in the 7/20/24 Release Notes. Sam has provided an update that the fixes will be available in production on 7/31/24, so hopefully the problems will no longer be an issue come August. 

[SeanPBA]

Thank you, @kailey. I just checked our beta instance, and it looks like Problems #1 and #2 from my post are fixed. It would be nice to have these fixes on 7/31.

However, I still submit the suggestion about removing the reference to the "Delay Posting" option because it is now completed by setting an "Available from" date. 

[leward]

@SamGarza1 ,

I'm a little confused.  In your reply to @baldwinsh , you seem to indicate that the sort default in the Discussions Redesign has been reverted to the legacy default--old to new. In our instance, the default sort order is newest to oldest.  Furthermore, the Canvas Guide states:

Discussion replies are sorted by date in descending order (newest to oldest) by default. Sorting discussion replies applies to the root replies. Threaded replies are collapsable and expandable.

Did I misunderstand your post or is the sort order change coming in the future? Personally, I think it would be a bad idea to change the default sort order now that the tool has been enforced.  

And while I have your attention, I'd like to bring up a topic that has been raised by multiple users in the past.  The use of a smaller font for replies to the original post is not good for low vision and older users, and I don't think it helps to clarify the thread hierarchy. Is the team exploring other options to clarify the thread levels?

[baldwinsh]

Having the posts in the newest to oldest order as @leward described is one of the reasons my institution (both designers and instructors) really liked and were excited about the discussion redesign. We're also excited to see the day when we can have multiple due dates on a discussion board! 😁

One of my fellow designers has suggested a filtering option where the user could choose if they wanted to see the posts newest to oldest or oldest to newest. That option could meet the needs of both types of users -- those wanting the legacy method and those (like me) who want the new method.

@SamGarza1  while I've got your attention, do announcements need to have a start date now? Or can they just be written and posted?

Thank you!

[rlbrown21]

Hi all,

A week in and this is our notes so far:

No Pope-tech in discussions - pretty much all CA CC's use popetech, this is really bad.  New quizzes and now discussions cannot be checked for accessibility issues globally using popetech. 

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If there is one or more posts unread - I can view unread, but now I cannot click to find that post in context. - This is a giant slow down to reading in context.   You can use split view to see what the reply was too, but you have to click about 5 times to see the reply in full context, and never on one screen.  Need to ability to jump to the unread post in the full discussion.

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Add lines between posts, make it more distinct and readable. there is too much white space!

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Not happy with defaults, let faculty choose expanded and sorting in Discussion settings (as stated above by others)

(from a faculty member)

It appears that the default is set in a way that it hides any replies (at least for any single one that I open).

If this is the same for students, they will never see my responses to them unless they actively click "expand  threads" and who would know to do this - probably almost no one.

Why is this? And can I change this for my students? 

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Please fix announcements ASAP

[Jeff_F]

@SamGarza1  Hello - first, thank you for returning the sort order back to the way it has been for the ten years we have been using Canvas. After announcing that change we received notes of gratitude from our instructors. And below is summarized feedback from instructors for our term that just ended which had over 800 courses using the redesign. 

Discussion Redesign Concerns

1. Expanding/collapsing threads: instructors don’t like having to expand the threads every time they visit the discussion list. After navigating to a second page Instructors/students then also must select the expand button.
2. Scrolling isn’t smooth: the page scroll is delayed and seems to jump to a different position instead of smoothly scrolling. (I think this has lessened since the last update when the Mark as Read/Unread button was introduced, but I am not positive on this.)
3. Visual separation between posts is needed: +1 for the idea to add lines between the posts. We were about to add borders using CSS but prefer to wait and experience what Canvas does.
4. Posts on different pages: instructors don’t like posts being on more than one page. The concern is students are less apt to read as many posts as then they must click the page and then again click the expand all threads button. Or manually click each one to expand. See #1 above.
5. Double entries: occasionally instructors and students will see their response listed twice despite only posting once (Support knows about this issue. This is caused when you click the button to submit twice in rapid succession.)
6. Font size differences: the font size of the replies is smaller than the initial replies. We are looking to use CSS to force all text to be the same size.

[baldwinsh]

I can see the benefit of size differences in denoting which is the initial reply and which is the response -- how does this work with ADA compliance?