Add a Discussion Topic
#Discussions

Encourage your learners to share thoughts about course material with peers. Set up forums and topics for learners to ask questions, discuss course content and assignments, and work together in assigned groups and sections.

  1. Navigate to Discussions.
  2. From the New drop-down menu, click New Topic .
  1. On the New Topic page, do the following:
  • Enter a Topic Title.
  • Click Change Forum to change the forum where your topic will go, if necessary.
  • To add your topic to your grade book, enter a value in the Grade Out Of field.
  • Enter a Description for your topic using Brightspace Editor.

Figure: The Topic Title, Grade Out Of, and Description fields.

  1. In the Availability Dates & Conditions menu, enter the following:
  • Enter a Start Date and End Date.
  • Adjust the Before end and After end restrictions based on your preferences by clicking each option.
  1. Click Add Release Condition to create a new release condition or add an existing one.
  2. Under Group and Section Restrictions, you can set different restrictions if you have Groups or Sections set up in your course.

Figure: The Availability Dates & Conditions menu.

  1. In the Post & Completion menu, select the checkboxes for any of the following options to apply them to your discussion topic:
    • Default participation
    • Allow learners to hide their name from other learners
    • Learners must start a thread before they can view or reply to other threads
  • Posts must be approved before they display in the topic

Figure: The Post & Completion menu.

  1. In the Evaluation & Feedback menu, do the following:
  • Click Add Rubric to attach a rubric to your discussion topic.
  • Click Manage Learning Objectives to associate learning objectives to your discussion topic.
  • Select the Allow evaluation of individual posts checkbox if you want to assign scores to posts. Then, select your Calculation Method. You can also choose to Include unevaluated posts in the topic score calculation as zero.
  • Select Allow learning to rate posts if you want your learners to score others’ posts. Then, select a rating type.

Figure: The Evaluation & Feedback menu.

  1. Toggle the Visibility ON or OFF.
  2. Click Save and Close.

Figure: The Visibility toggle and the Save and Save and Close options.