Discussions facilitate student engagement with course content. They can be general discussions, small group discussions, or one-on-one conversations between an instructor and student. The instructor may grade discussions, and they may also be graded as a peer-reviewed activity.

Canvas discussions differ from eClass discussions in 3 major ways:

• All discussions consist of a single topic that the instructor enters when creating the discussion - students then reply to that initial topic and/or to any sub-replies to create threads. There is no option to create multiple top-level topics in a Canvas discussion.
• There is no option to have separate but visible grouped forums.
• There is no option to have force-subscribed discussion forums. 

The Canvas knowledge base has additional instructions on creating discussions.

Adding a discussion

1. To get started, click on Discussions in the left tab menu:

2. In the Discussions page, click the +Discussion button at the top right of the page to create a discussion:

3. The Settings (gear) icon beside the +Discussions button has a set of global settings for all of your course discussions:

4. In My Settings, as an instructor, you may change the setting to mark replies read manually. A new reply has a blue dot. A white dot indicates a reply is read. By default, when you navigate away from the discussion or refresh the page, the blue dots will change to white dots, indicating the replies are read.

For Student Settings, you have options to allow students to

• Create discussion topics
• Create anonymous discussion topics
• Edit and delete their own replies
• Attach files to discussions
• Report replies

Note: Students cannot create anonymous discussion topics unless `Create discussion topics' is active.

5. Give your discussion a Topic Title and a clear description of your expectations for the discussion:

Note: the discussion description in the Rich Content Editor (RCE) can include text, URLs, videos, and images.

Restrict a discussion to a course section

1. You can post a discussion to 'All sections' in your course or set it so that only individual course sections will see it:

Note: This option is not available for Group discussions.

Note: Course sections are created for every Bear Tracks cohort added to a course, eg. lectures, labs, etc. Sections help subdivide students within a course and offer section-specific options such as varied due dates for assignments, discussions, and quizzes. There is also a separate section in every course created for Teachers, TAs, Designers, and other administrator roles - this section is prepended with 'Default -' and should not be used for when making posts intended for students.

Discussion options

1. You may attach a file to the discussion for students to address in the discussion or to add additional information not included in the discussion description:

2. There are three options under Anonymous Discussion:

• Off: student names and profile pictures will be visible to other members of this course
• Partial: students can choose whether to reveal their names and profile pictures
• Full: students post with complete anonymity as student names and profile pictures are hidden

Note: anonymous discussions cannot be graded.

3. Additional options include

• Users must post before seeing replies
• Enable podcast feed
• Graded
• Allow liking
• Add to students' to-do lists

4. Selecting for a Graded discussion adds a grade book column and opens additional settings options:

• Points Possible: You may select the total score
• Display Grade as: points, a percentage, complete/incomplete, letter grade or a GPA scale
• Assignment Group: the discussion will be added to the named assignment group you select in your course

Note: Once an assignment group has been selected, you must go to that group if you need to edit the discussion. For example, if a discussion has been saved to the Assignments group, you can edit it in the Assignments group.

5. In addition, you can assign the graded discussions to course sections or to individual students:

Note: Canvas may, by default, Disallow threaded discussions, which will force participants to respond to the whole discussion rather than to individual posts. Uncheck this option to allow responses to individual posts:

Peer-reviewed and group discussions

1. If the option is checked to grade a discussion to Require Peer Reviews, additional options will be available:

2. If assigning the discussion to groups, choosing `This is a Group Discussion' lets you assign to a Group Set or groups created in your course:

3. Students can also be allowed to "like" posts or liking can be restricted to graders:

Due dates and availability

Finally, set the due dates and availability dates for Graded Discussions:

If you are assigning due dates and availability to multiple different sections or individuals, click +Add to add them.

AI Discussion Summaries (Feature Preview)

New in September 2024, instructors can now use an AI-driven feature that summarizes all the posts in a particular forum. This has been released as a 'feature preview' by Canvas and must be enabled at a course level by instructors to opt-in. Summaries can only be viewed by instructors and TAs and may be regenerated and or guided with prompts to explore specific topics.

To enable discussion summaries, open the course Settings, access the Feature options tab, and click Enabled for Discussion summary:

With this enabled, to generate a summary of a discussion, click the Summarize button at the top of the discussion:

Full Canvas documentation on this feature is available here.