Discussions are a convenient means for you and your students to interact with each other over the course content. Desire2Learn discussions are an asynchronous (i.e., not real time) communication tool. A discussion contains forums, topics, and messages.
This page has information on how to:
- Set Up a Discussion
- Subscribing to Discussions
- Reordering Discussion Modules and Topics
- Change Discussion Settings
- Hide, Restrict, and Lock Discussions
- Search and Sort Posts
Set Up a Discussion
- From the Navigation bar within your course, click Discussions.
- Click the New dropdown arrow
and select Forum.
Note: You must first create a forum and then create at least one topic in that forum before students can access the discussion.
- In the Title text box, type the name for your new forum.
- Optional: In the Description text box, type a short description of the forum.
Note: This optional description will be displayed under the forum title in the Forums & Topics List pane.
- For a discussion to be visible to students, you must add at least one topic to a forum. To add the topic immediately, click Save & Add Topic. The New Topic pane appears.
- In the New Topic Details section, type the title for your new topic in the Title text box.
- In the Description text box, type the question or topic for discussion and any instructions for students. This is what students see while they compose their messages.
- Optional: To add additional topics for the same Forum, click Save and New and repeat steps 6-7.
- Click Save.
The forum and topic(s) are added.
Subscribing to Discussions
This feature is temporarily disabled due to D2L performance issues.
You can subscribe to forums or specific topics that are posted in Discussions. If you are subscribed to a forum or topic, you will receive notifications when there are updates to them. Before you can subscribe to a forum or topic, you must change your Notification settings.
- Access the Personal Menu on the right end of the minibar at the top of the page. Click the dropdown arrow next to your name on the right. Select Notifications.
- Once you are in the Notification settings menu, you must choose the email account that notifications will be sent to. To do this, click Enable email notifications under the Contact Methods heading.
- When you do this a dialogue box will open. Here you can choose whether to have notifications sent to your system email (which is your UWEC email) or a different email address.
- Once you have made a selection, click Save. You will now see your chosen email displayed.
- In this settings box you can also indicate if you would like a Summary of Activity sent to your email. If so, use the dropdown box to select Daily (instead of the default Never). Choose the time of day you prefer to receive your activity summary (ies). You may also choose for what occurrences you wish to receive notifications. SAVE.
- Once you have chosen an email to receive notifications you will be able to subscribe to forums and topics. Select the course in which you would like to subscribe to discussions. From the Navigation bar within this course, click Discussions.
- To the left of each forum and topic you will see a gray star
. To subscribe to a forum or a topic within a forum, click this star.
Note: If you subscribe to an entire forum you will automatically be subscribed to every topic within that forum.
- A dialogue box will appear on your screen. In this box you are able to choose whether you would like to be notified via email instantly of changes to this forum or topic, or if you would simply like it included in your summary of activity.
Note: From this screen you can also change your notification settings by clicking Change your notification settings in a new window.
- Click
to continue. Notice that the star to the left of the forum or topic you have subscribed to has now turned gold: 
Note: If you subscribed to an entire forum, notice that the stars next to each topic within that forum have turned gold as well. The indicates that you have subscribed to every topic in that forum.
- To unsubscribe from a forum or topic at any time, click the star to the left. A dialogue box will appear to confirm that you wish to unsubscribe. Click Yes to continue. Notice that the star next to the item you have unsubscribed from has returned to its original gray color.
Reordering Discussion Modules and Topics
Modules and topics can be rearranged to display in any order you would like.
- From the Navigation bar within your course, click Discussions.
- Click the dropdown arrow to the right of the More Actions button. Click Reorder.
- To reorder modules or topics within a module, use the dropdown menus to the right of each module and topic.
Change Discussion Settings
- From the Navigation bar within your course, click Discussions.
- Click the Settings icon on the right side of your screen:
You will see the discussion options displayed.
- Choose the desired options and click Save to continue.
Hide, Restrict, and Lock Discussions
By default, students can view and post in a forum or topic at any time. If you want to hide, restrict, or lock a discussion after you've created the forum or topic, click Discussions, select the dropdown arrow next to the forum or topic you want to change, and select Edit Topic.
Note: Any restrictions you apply to a forum also apply to its topics. If you have more than one topic in a forum, and want them to be available at different times, apply restrictions to the topics separately. Otherwise apply restrictions to the forum.
Availability
If a discussion topic has not been hidden or date restricted, students can see it. When you're editing a forum or topic, Availability appears on the Properties tab, below the Description.
The image below shows the Availability section with the default option selected, Forum is always visible. The next option below is to hide the forum, in which case the instructor would have to manually unhide it in order for students to view it. The last option sets the forum to be visible for a specific date range so it automatically becomes available to students on a certain day and unavailable on a certain day (if chosen).
If you do not see these options in D2L, click Show forum visibility options.
Locking Options
A locked forum or topic is visible to students, but they cannot post or reply in that discussion. This is useful if you want students to be able to refer to the discussion board, but do not want any more posts in that forum or topic. When you're editing a forum or topic, Locking Options appears on the Properties tab, below Availability.The image below shows the Locking Options section with the default Unlock forum selected. These options are similar to those for availability, in which locking If you do not see these options in D2L, click Show locking options.
Search and Sort Posts
Searching
You can search within a topic for a particular post or author. Click the More Actions dropdown menu and select Show Search:
The search box will then be displayed directly above the list of posts.
Sorting Posts
- Click Discussions.
- Click the desired topic.
- From the View pull-down menu, select All Messages » click Apply.
Note: This step lets you sort posts, instead of seeing them threaded.
- Click Authored By to sort posts by author.
-
Click Subject to sort posts by title.
-
Click Date to sort posts by date posted.
Viewing Discussion Statistics by People
- Click Discussions.
- Click the Statistics tab.
- With the Users tab selected, click the View By pull-down menu, select User for users, or Groups and Group number for groups.
- Click Apply.
- For more detailed statistics for a user, click the desired name.
Viewing Discussion Statistics by Forums and Topics
- Click Discussions.
- Click the Statistics tab.
- Select the Forums and Topics tab.
- To view more detailed statistics for each topic, click the desired topic.
