I'm teaching a creative writing workshop, where students will upload their writing into a Discussion post, and other students are expected to read that writing and provide feedback. We have conversations about the work in a synchronous meeting, so student speak to each other in that space. In addition, I would like them to exchange written feedback in replies in that discussion, but only want the reply visible to the instructor and to the person who started the thread.

Without this, it feels like students have to rely on emails to each other to exchange private messages, and that's tedious. It would be great if there was a way for student to set a reply in a discussion as "private" so the rest of the students in the class don't see it.