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D2L Discussions Creating discussion forums and topics Before creating a discussion, you must create a forum in which to have that discussion. Forums organize your discussion topics into categories. You might think of the difference between Topics & Forums as being analogous to the difference between books & bookshelves. Books are where the actual communication happens, but we need the bookshelves to organize the communication. Create a new forum 1. From the Discussions List page (see screenshot below), click New Forum from the New button. 2. Enter a title for your forum. 3. Click the “Save and Close” button, found at the bottom of the screen. Hint #1: Using fewer Forums creates a simpler looking interface, and for that reason is usually preferable. If you only do a handful of discussions each semester, one forum is enough. If you offer several discussions each week, you might consider creating one forum for each week. Week 1 Forum Discussion Topic #1 Discussion Topic #2 Week 2 Forum Discussion Topic #3 Discussion Topic #4 Discussion Topic #5 Week 3 Forum Discussion Topic #6 Discussion Topic #7 Hint #2: You can set visibility and locking option in both Forums and Topics. Decide to use one or the other. Setting dates in both forums & topics is confusing and doubles your chances for making mistakes. Create a New Topic 1. On the Discussions List page, click New Topic from the New button. 2. Select which Forum to put your topic into. Click “[New Forum]” to create a new forum for your topic. 3. Give your discussion topic a title. 4. What would you like to talk about? o You might challenge students with a “wicked” problem for which there is no objectively correct answer. o You might also ask students about a difficult aspect of their homework. Then let then discuss how best to tackle the work as a class. o Consider replacing the Dropbox with the discussion tool for some assignments. Writing for their peers might encourage higher quality work, and you can still give feedback privately. 5. This is a great and underutilized option. 6. You can give students the option to “thumbs up” posts they like –a good alternative to “I agree with you” posts. Hint #3: If you don’t plan to hide any discussions from your students, consider hiding the visibility option from yourself. That way, you don’t get visibility and locking options confused when you’re setting up dates. 7. Visibility shows or hides discussion topics. Use this is you don’t want students to see upcoming discussions. 8. Locking Options allows or prevents students from posting to a discussion. 9. Click the “Save and Close” button (or “Save and New” or “Save”). Assessing Discussions For the love of all that’s good, use the D2L gradebook for discussions! If you’re not attaching discussions to gradebook items, you’re creating WAY more work for yourself. 1. From the Edit Discussion Topic page, click the “Assessment” tab. 2. Connect your discussion to a Gradebook item. If you haven’t created a gradebook item yet, you can do that by clicking “[New Grade Item]”. 3. You must state how many points are possible. 4. You can add a discussion rubric. 5. This allows you to assess each comment a student makes. Overall score for a discussion could then be an average of scores for the individual comments. 6. Click the “Save and Close” button. Discussion Tool Notes. Let’s have a discussion about discussions. Here some good “wicked” problems we can solve: How can we use discussions as a way to engage students? Are students not reading the directions? How can we structure either the instructions, or how we assess discussions, to encourage them to participate?