Individual Discussions

The Discussions tool in Brightspace can be configured in such a way that individual students can create posts that are only visible to themselves and the instructor.

In this capacity, they can be used for easily trackable weekly submissions or journal entries, office hours and feedback, or simply as a method of direct communication (as an instructor can also reply or post within a student’s individual discussion). These options may seem abstract but do address some gaps in Brock’s Brightspace experience.

Creating a One-on-one Discussion Topic

Instructors may be concerned that a one-on-one Discussion forum between the teaching team and each student in their class will create a large and messy of topics in their discussion area, which can be inconvenient especially if there are other Forums and Topics in play. Thankfully, instructors can either choose to collapse the forum to hide all the topics and keep the space organized (if they prefer a separate topic for each student), or they can create a single topic that will facilitate individual private discussions with each student.

1. Create a category of Groups with the enrollment type single user, member-specific groups. These can be generated with single click and the process is quick and easy. Learn more about creating Group categories from CPI guide for creating Group categories.

2. After creating the category, select Discussions from the navbar.

3. Select New → Forum.

   1. Choose a title and description for the forum, then select Save.

At this point, instructors will have to choose whether they want one topic with all student’s posts inside (where the instructor/TAs can see all posts and filter them, but students only see their own), or create one topic per student. This is strictly an organizational choice, not functional. See the screenshots below that help to illustrate the difference between the two.

One Topic for All Students

This method will create a single Topic that houses all student activity, although that activity is still restricted based on membership. An instructor will be faced with a very busy Topic but do get filters for viewing by individual student contributions.

This method is recommended for Topics that will be assessed in Brightspace.

Open

A single topic that will allow students to privately post threads only visible to themselves and the instructor.

1. Select New → Topic.

2. Choose a title and description for the topic.

3. In the Availability Dates and Conditions sub-menu, select the Manage Restrictions link.

4. Select Restrict topic and separate the threads to create a single topic where students can post, and only see their own messages

5. Select the group category that was created with the enrollment type single user, member-specific groups.

6. Make any other changes to the topic and then click Save and Close.

7. Once in place, the restriction will be displayed like this:

   Open

   

One Topic Per Student

It may be easier to see and understand each student’s activity by separating them into individual Topics.

This method is not recommended for Topics that will be assessed in Brightspace and can result in a very long Discussion page for large classes.

Follow the instructions for creating Group-restricted Topics to quickly create a topic for each student, or work through the additional options when creating the single-student Groups.

Tidy up the Discussions page

Any Forum can be collapsed to clean up the Discussions area by selecting the drop-down area next to the forum title and selecting Collapse Forum.