This tutorial goes over how to create Discussion Forums and Topics as well as how to grade Discussions in Brightspace.
Overview of Discussions
Use Discussions to encourage students to share their thoughts on course materials with their peers. Discussions are organized into Forums, which can contain multiple Topics. You and your students post Threads inside topics and other students Reply to the threads. In most cases, courses only need a single forum to house all of a course’s topics, however if you rely heavily on discussions in your course, it may make sense to have multiple forums.
*Note: Forums are just “containers” for Topics. They cannot have grades attached to them. You will assign your grade items to topics.
Creating Discussion Forums and Topics
Select ”Discussions” on the course Navbar.
When the ”Discussions” page appears, click the ”New” button and select ”New Forum.”
Enter a Title for your new forum.
Enter a Description for your new forum.
In the Options section, select any of the check boxes that suit your needs. All topics created under this forum will have these same options.
Click ”Save and Add Topic.”
A New Topic page will appear for editing.
Enter a Title for the topic.
Enter a Description. This is likely where you would want to enter a prompt or question for students to reply to.
Select any other Options that fit your needs.
Click the ”Assessment” tab.
Select the corresponding Grade Item you previously created for this discussion, or click ”New Grade Item.”
Enter a Score Out Of. This is the maximum amount of points the discussion is worth.
If you want to distribute points to individual posts, rather than by topic, select ”Allow assessment of individual posts.”
Click ”Save” if all topics are created or ”Save and New” and repeat from Step 7 for remaining topics.
Grading Discussions
Select ”Discussions” on the course Navbar.
When the Discussions page appears, click the chevron next to the Discussion Topic you wish to grade.
Select ”Assess Topic” from the menu that appears.
If you do not see the Assess Topic option, it means you did not connect a Grade Item to this topic. Once you have a Grade Item in the Grades tool for this discussion topic, select ”Edit Topic” from the ”Action Button,” and click the ”Assessment” tab to set the Grade Item and Score Out Of fields.
When the Assess Topic page appears, you will see a list of your students. Click the ”Topic Score” link underneath a student’s name.
A pop-up window will appear with the student’s name at the top.
The Score field is located on the upper-right corner of the pop-up.
A Feedback text area is in the middle of the pop-up for you to provide direct feedback to the student. Only the student can see what you enter here.
Score the student’s performance in the topic and provide them with feedback.
Click either the ”Publish” or ”Save Draft” buttons.
