Wrapping Up Discussions Redesign: Checkpoints Come to Group Work

[SamGarza1]

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What’s Changing?

Earlier this year we launched Discussion Checkpoints, a feature designed to encourage structured participation by setting deadlines for each reply of a discussion. This enhancement aimed to promote more thoughtful, intentional engagement among students. Until now, Discussion Checkpoints have been available exclusively for individual discussions. We’re excited to share that as of June 18, instructors can now enable Discussion Checkpoints for group discussions as well!

Image of Discussion settings highlighting “assign graded checkpoints” and “this is a group discussion”.

What to expect?

Discussion checkpoints for group discussions mirrors the functionality found in standard discussions. Educators can now set a required number of replies and deadlines for students within group discussions. The familiar customizable grading view also remains in SpeedGrader, allowing educators  to grade replies traditionally or within the broader discussion context. More information on these grading options can be found in this article.

Discussion showing group selection and checkpoint instructions.

What does this mean for me?

Facilitating more meaningful group discussions is now easier! Educators can now set specific reply requirements, deadlines, and assigned points to facilitate a more structured and collaborative environment for their student groups..

Wrapping up Discussion Redesign

The introduction of Group Discussion support for Discussion Checkpoints marks a major milestone. Not only as a feature release, but as the completion of our broader Discussion Redesign initiative. Over the past year, we've reimagined the discussions experience to offer instructors more control, learners more structure, and institutions more flexibility in managing asynchronous discussion. In addition to Discussion Checkpoints, the redesign initiative has also added:

• Quoting and @ mentions
• Full and partial discussion anonymity
• Flexible viewing options, including inline and split view
• View settings to select the default thread state and sort order
• Reply reporting with notifications to instructors
• Improved search with highlighting

What does this mean for future enhancements?

We’re always looking for ways to improve the current experience, and that doesn’t change now. While we’re concluding the formal Discussion Redesign project, we still have our eyes set on future updates to add even more benefits to our educators and students. 

• Discussion Checkpoints remain a Feature Option for the foreseeable future. Admins are able to enable the feature option at the account or sub-account level.
• Turnitin support - We understand how important it is for many of our customers to have the ability to utilize TurnItIn’s Plagiarism detection tool within discussions. We’re actively developing a proposed solution and plan to validate those discussions with customers in the coming months. Stay tuned for future updates coming soon. 

We want to hear from you!

As we bring this redesign effort to a close, we’d love to hear how the Discussions Checkpoints feature is working for you. Please take a moment to complete this brief survey and let us know what’s working well, and if there are any other areas we should consider for future improvement. 

Thank you for your continued partnership during this initiative, we look forward to learning ways these changes have already begun benefiting you and your institution. 

Keep learning!