Discussions are areas where students can contribute content to the course.

Student file attachments for non-graded Discussions are counted towards their personal quota. Attachments for graded discussions are not counted.

Discussion Page:

1. Course options that can be toggled for Student Settings (via settings cog icon near the top right):

Students can Create discussion topics
- Selecting this option will enable the [+Discussion] for students and allow them to create discussion topics in the same way an instructor can.
Students can Edit and delete their own posts
Students can Attach files to discussions

2. All discussions are a single topic, not separate threads.

3. "Pinned Discussions" are sorted by the instructor, "Discussions" are sorted by most recent activity.

The Pinned Discussion area might be useful if you have selected to

Online discussion with and between students in a course can be a very powerful and effective teaching tool. Quercus has a built-in discussion tool, and at the University of Toronto, we are also piloting another, enhanced discourse tool called PeppeR (available from the tools area while building your course). Instructors should be aware that once a discussion board is enabled, they should carefully monitor the correspondence in the discussion to make sure students are using the tool effectively. Instructors who have not built this monitoring into their course's design may wish to avoid turning on discussion tools. For more about best teaching practices, please visit the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation's discussion board-related resources.

More about Discussions in the Canvas Guides

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