Creating Private Journals

Instructors can use the Brightspace Discussions tool for one-on-one, private journaling and blogs between instructor and individual student. In order to set up a Discussion for this, you’ll need to create single-user groups for student each. Then you will create a discussion for those single-user groups. The groups tool automates this process.

Instructors can use the Brightspace Discussions tool for one-on-one, private journaling or Blogs between instructor and individual student. In order to set up a Discussion for this, you’ll need to create groups of one student each. Then you will create a discussion for those single-user groups. The groups tool automates this process This discussion area replaces Journals and Blogs from Blackboard.

Creating Journal Areas

Go into the Course Tools menu
Select Groups

 

Select New Category 

 

 

Enter in a Category Name (and optionally a description)
For Enrollment Type, select Single user, member-specific groups

 

 

Under Additional Options, select Set up discussion areas

Under Forum, use the drop down selector to choose a forum you would like to assign this journal to, or select New Forum to create a new forum.  Chose SAVE to save the new Forum name.  The forum will be present in the Discussions area of your course. 

Then select Create new topic

Select Save.  Once selected, your groups will be created in the background (this process may take a few minutes). 

 

You will then be prompted to create a restricted topic.  This topic will be the journal area where your students can type in their own personal journals. 
When creating a topic, you can choose to either Create one topic per group or Create one topic with threads separated by group. 

Each option does the following:

• Create one topic per group (not recommended if you plan on grading journals): This will create a topic for each student in the discussion forum.  These topics will only be viewable to each individual student, and the instructor. 
• Create one topic with threads separated by group (recommended if you plan on grading journals): This will make one topic in the discussion forum.  Students can add a thread to the topic that will only be viewable to themselves, and the instructor. 

 

The private journals will be created in the discussions area.  Each student will need to chose Start a New Thread in order for their individual journal to be created. 

 

Enable Grading for Private Discussions

Navigate to the Discussion Area in your course.

Scroll to the Topic for your Private Discussion, select the dropdown arrow and select Edit Topic. 

Edit any grading criteria for this assignment and Save and Close