Feature Preview Overview: Discussion Summaries

[#1]

• Summary
• Availability
• Configuration
• Account and Course Setup
• Course-Level Features

Summary

Discussion Summarization uses a Generative AI model to provide instructors summaries of key points, questions, and ideas in a discussion thread.

This feature is designed to save educators time and to allow discussions to be used effectively in large-format classes and other environments where they were previously infeasible.

Availability

Release Schedule	Coming soon! View updates via the change log in the Discussion Summaries User Group.
Affected User Roles	Admin, Instructor
Affects User Interface	Yes
Related Feature Enhancement Ideas	Please post ideas to the Discussion Summaries user group, which is coming soon!
Upcoming Enhancements	N/A
Mobile App Support	Not yet available
Beta Environment Availability	2024-07-20
Production Environment Availability	2024-07-17
Free-for-Teacher Availability	TBD
Enforcement Date	Will remain a feature option

Configuration

Feature Option Location & Default Status	Account (Disabled/Locked)
Feature Option State	Feature Preview (collecting user feedback)
Enabled by Canvas Admin	Yes (learn how to enable feature options)
Subaccount Configuration	Yes
Related Feature Options	Discussion Summary
Affected Canvas Areas	Discussions
Advisories
Permissions	Inherent to user role (Instructor or admin required)
APIs	Not supported

Account and Course Setup

Feature Option

At the Account-level, admins must enable the Discussion Summary feature option. Once enabled, a Summarize button displays for instructors on the Discussions page.

Course-Level Features

When the Discussion Summary feature option is enabled, discussion threads have a “Summarize” button that will use generative AI to generate a summary of key points and questions in the thread. Once generated, summaries may be refined by passing a description of desired outputs (e.g. “concerns about grading policy”), or be regenerated. These summaries are only available to instructors and administrators.

Summarize Button

To summarize discussion threads, click the Summarize button.

Enter the desired area or topic to summarize.

Enter the desired area or topic to summarize.

Generate Summary and Disable Summary Buttons

To generate a summary, click the Generate Summary button [1]. To exit the discussion summary, click the Disable Summary button [2].

Generated Summary

A summary is created based on the topics the instructor asked about.