Creating Graded Discussions

[dawsonh1]

My university is make the very difficult transition from Blackboard to Canvas. I am very much lost and am not finding answers in the instructor guide. While I have found everything about Canvas to be challenging so far, my current concern is creating a graded discussion. I have followed these instructions in the instructor guide and am still unable to create my discussion. When I click "save and publish" I receive a message to "Select an Assignment group." Why am I getting this message? What is an Assignment group? How can I select an "assignment group" if there are none listed in the dropdown menu?  I can't seem to find anything to explain what this means....Here is a screeshot, any direction that someone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @dawsonh1 ...

I'll paste in my response here that I also posted on the Guide that you replied to: How do I create a discussion as an instructor? 

If you didn't want to create a new assignment group for this particular discussion topic, then in the "Assignment Group" dropdown menu that you have shown in your screen shot, you should have an option for "Assignments" which is, by default, the name of the assignment group that would typically contain all assignments in your course on your "Assignments" page.  So, if you instead select "Assignments" from that dropdown list instead of "[ New Group ]", you shouldn't get that error, and you'd be able to save your discussion topic.  Normally when you select the "[ New Group ]" option, you are then prompted to type in a new name for your group in the "New Group Name" text box...so it creates the new group "on the fly" for you, and you'd then find that new group name in your "Assignments" page.  Hope that helps.

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @dawsonh1  

I will add a bit to  @Chris_Hofer  and  @kona  excellent explanations..............

First things first - Canvas calls all graded activities "Assignments". This includes Quizzes, Assignments and graded Discussions.

All assignments you create in Canvas live in an assignment group, and by default Canvas creates a group called simply "Assignments". This feature was provided to give faculty a tool for meaningfully sorting and managing assignments by some theme that works for them and their curriculum. In my own courses I have three assignment groups:

• Assignments (where I put what would typically be called "homework" or "assignments"),
• Assessments (where I put all my quizzes, both formative and summative), and
• Participation (where I put my discussions).

The Canvas gradebook creates total columns for each Assignment Group, which can be a great organization tool for you and your students. Teachers also have the ability to apply rules to and weight assignment groups in Canvas. In the new Canvas Gradebook you are able to re-arrange your gradebook columns and you could arrange the assignments you have created by their respective groups, with the group-total column following the group's assignments.

Explore the Guide links that Chris and Kona have provided you and learn more about how to use assignment groups in Canvas.

I hope that between Kona, Chris and myself, we have given you a good start on understanding and managing your graded content in Canvas.

If you need anything else, you know where to find us.

Kelley