How do I handle Discussions in cross-listed courses?
Cross-listing sections in Canvas makes managing Discussions a little more complicated. See the guide below for help in knowing what to do about using Discussions in cross-listed courses.
Answer
There are three options:
- Allow all sections to participate in the same Discussion Post.
- Benefits:
- For graded discussions, only one assignment is needed for all students.
- Drawbacks:
- All students can see all Discussion replies and so may be overwhelmed by the number of replies they should read.
- Recommendations:
- You will probably want to make sure that the Discussion doesn't "open" until all sections are ready to participate. If you have a section that gets the material on Monday and two others who get it on Tuesday, don't open the discussion until after the second section on Tuesday.
- Make sure to turn on the "Student must reply before seeing other replies" option in the Discussion settings.
- Benefits:
- Duplicate Sections using Groups, set up the Discussion as a Group Discussion.
- Benefits:
- Each section gets their own Discussion board and only sees their section of students' responses.
- Only one assignment is needed for the Gradebook.
- Drawbacks:
- Requires longer set up to establish the groups (and you'll need to check back in on them as students drop or add the class).
- Benefits:
- Create a separate Discussion for each section:
- Benefits:
- No need to worry about creating groups. Just create the Discussion and assign it to only one section. Duplicate it for as many sections as you need.
- Each section gets their own Discussion board and only sees their section of students' responses.
- Drawbacks:
- Each Discussion assignment appears separately in the Gradebook.
- Benefits: