Canvas Discussion Board upgrade (Summer 2024)

Instructure, the company behind Canvas, listened to user feedback and upgraded the discussion feature to make it more engaging, user-friendly, and efficient. The old Discussion Board and Announcement view will be retired on July 20, 2024 and all courses will switch to the new Discussion Board view.

Activation Steps for Summer 2024 Faculty

ITS strongly encourages Summer 2024 instructors to proactively upgrade their course discussion boards and announcements prior to the July 20, 2024 mandatory cut-over:

1. Go into a Canvas course
2. Click on Settings at the bottom of the left-hand navigation menu
3. In the top tab-bar, click Feature options
4. Look for the Discussions/Announcements Redesign item
   1. If it's marked with a green checkmark, the new design is enabled in this course
   2. If it's marked with a red (X), click that (X) icon to enable it in this course

Illustration of the Feature Options area:

On and after July 20, no action is required from instructors for this migration; all current discussion board content will be automatically transferred to the new version without any data loss.

Overview

To see all the interface changes with visuals, check out Instructure’s Discussions Redesign Release Notes.

Feature Parity

The new Discussions Redesign includes most of the classic Discussions features:

• Option to require users to post before seeing replies
• Mark reply posts as read or unread
• Display for discussion timestamp edits
• Multiple due dates for graded discussion boards
• Available From and Until dates
• Previous/Next buttons for modules
• Group discussions
• Peer review for graded discussion boards
• Add to student to-do list

New Features

The updated Discussions Redesign also introduces:

• Role labels indicating when the instructor is leading a discussion
• Flexible viewing options (inline view or split view)
• Mentions to notify users tagged with @
• Quotes to reference a reply
• Anonymous ungraded discussions for honest responses
• Enhanced search functionality with sorting and filtering options
• Improved visuals on the mobile app
• Edit history feature allowing instructors to view all versions of student replies
• Streamlined create/edit interface for better consistency and accessibility
• Checkpoints feature for setting two due dates: one for initial responses and one for replies (available August 2024)

The above comparison is available in visual format in Instructure's promotion PDF on the Discussion Board Redesign.

Key Interface Changes to Discussions and Announcements

In the New Discussion Board, some functions have moved to a new location/menu, including the Edit option:

OLD: (with edit button in the upper-right)

NEW: (with no edit button because the edit function is now in the menu)

When the triple-dot menu in the upper-right corner is clicked, multiple options appear, including "Edit":