Introduction

In this article we will walk you through how to set up Discussion on Topic from the perspective of a teacher.

If you’d like more information on how this tool works, you can check out other articles here:

• Discussion on Topic: For Teachers (Active Assignment)

• Discussion on Topic: Overview

• Discussion on Topic: For Students

Tool In Action

How this article is structured 

This article walks you through the steps of a Discussion on Topic activity, following the same flow as the tool itself. It will describe the process of setting up the assignment. This refers to what you can configure before the assignment is published, such as instructions, settings, deadlines, grouping, and grading rules. Students cannot access the activity at this stage. You can still edit some settings after publishing; however, once students start making progress, certain options may be locked to protect their work and data. Wherever this applies, the article will clearly note it.
Note: When you open a published activity, you’ll land on the Active Assignment view by default. To return to the setup view after publishing, click Edit in the upper-left corner of the activity.
You can see the article about the Active Assignment view of this tool here.

Accessibility

We're devoted to making our tools as accessible as possible for all learners - to read more about accessibility in FeedbackFruits tools, check this article: Accessibility: Within FeedbackFruits Tools.

Step 1: Instructions

Here, you can write the instructions you want to provide to your students. If you'd like to include an audio, video, screen recording, or attach a file, simply click the add items icon to do so.

Collaboration Options

Directly underneath the instructions, you can select options for student collaboration.

Options for students post:

1. Individually

2. As a group

Options for students discuss:

1. Individually. Students will individually get assigned to anyone.

2. Within groups. Students individually get assigned someone within their group. (Disabled if ‘as a group’ option for hand in is chosen).

3. Outside of their group. Students individually get assigned to someone, not in their group. (Disabled if ‘as a group’ option for hand in is chosen).

4. Individually, same work per group member. Each member of a group gets assigned to review the same group. Reviews are made individually. (Disabled if ‘individually’ option for hand in is chosen).

This will allow for the following combinations:

1. Post discussions individually, discuss individually
   Use this option if you want students to individually post their discussion and then be assigned to engage with the posts of one or more random peers who have also shared their discussions.

   1. Use case: In a class of 20 students, each student is required to post 2 discussion entries. Each student is then assigned 2 discussion posts from other students to engage with.

       

2. Post discussions individually, discuss within groups
   Use this option if you want students to individually post their discussions and then participate in smaller group discussions to engage with their peers’ posts.

   1. Use case: In a class of 20 students divided into 5 groups, each group is assigned a specific topic. Each student in the group individually posts their discussion. When engaging with others, each student discusses the posts within their group.

       

3. Post discussions individually, discuss outside of their groups
   Use this option if you want students to individually post their discussions and then be assigned to engage with posts from peers outside their group.

   1. Use case: In a class of 4 groups with 5 students each, each group is assigned a specific topic. Each student creates and posts their own discussion individually. When engaging with others, each student is assigned posts from students in different groups.

       

4. Post discussions as a group, discuss individually
   Use this option if you want students to collaborate on a single group discussion post but participate individually in discussions with posts from other groups.

   1. Use case: Students work in 5 groups of 4 to collaboratively create and post one group discussion. Each of the 20 students is then assigned to engage individually with posts from other groups.

5. Hand in work as a group, discuss individually, same work per member

   Use this option if you want the group to submit their work collectively, while each member individually reviews and discusses the same group's submission.

   1. Use case: In a class of 5 groups with 4 students each, the group collaborates on one submission and hands it in. When discussing, each member of a group is assigned the same group's submission to review and discuss individually. 

For more information on configuring groups when using FeedbackFruits within Blackboard, Brightspace or Canvas, click here. If it's not possible to sync the groups within your LMS or if you are using the platform, you can find more information about how to create groups here.

Step 2: Discussion Posts

In Step 2, you can create a prompt for students to base their discussion posts on. You can also customize the required number of posts each student needs to submit and specify the desired length for each post.

Scheduling deadlines: Set the start and end times for student access, including during class sessions. After the deadline, students will no longer be able to make a discussion post. If no deadline is specified, students can access the posts at their convenience.

You can close the task manually, set it to close on a specific date, or leave it open indefinitely. If a closing date is specified, you can also grant students an extension to make a post after the deadline. By selecting this option (as illustrated in the screenshot below), you can specify which students will regain access to this step and assign them a new deadline of your choosing.

Anonymity: The discussion threads and replies on the video are anonymous, but teachers can always identify the students.

Guiding students (optional): Here, you’ll find the Feedback Coach, an AI-powered tool that provides real-time feedback to help students enhance their discussion posts. Simply toggle this feature on to enable it.

Step 3: Peer Discussion

In this step, you can decide how students will participate:

• Assigned Discussion: Students are allocated specific peers to engage with, meaning they can only discuss posts from their assigned peers.

• Free-Form Discussion: Students are free to engage with any posts they choose.

Based on your selection, you can specify either the required number of peers for assigned discussions or the required number of posts for free-form discussions.

You can set a scheduled deadline to limit the time students can participate in the discussion thread. Extensions can also be granted at this step. If anonymity is enabled, replies will appear anonymous to peers, but as the teacher, you will always be able to see the names of those who replied. Guiding students is optional. Fill in this section only if you have specific review instructions for your students in this step.

Step 4: Valuable Contributions (optional)

In this step, you can choose whether or not students should select the most valuable contribution. To add a valuable contributions step, scroll to the bottom of the assignment in edit mode and click the plus (+) button in the green circle to view the available learning steps to add.

Then you can click add to the learning step you wish to add to your assignment.

In the valuable contributions step, students can select what they consider the most valuable contributions to be graded by you as the teacher. Please note that they can only select comments made by their peers, not their own. You can specify the number of contributions students can submit by setting it to an exact number, a minimum, or a maximum based on your chosen amounts.

Step 5: Reflections (optional)

When setting up the reflections step, you can specify the required length of the written reflection, with a minimum of 1 word and a maximum of 5000 words. You can also set a deadline for when students must complete their reflection and enable features like the Reflection Coach, which provides AI-powered, real-time feedback to help students improve their reflections. This option is available under the Guiding Students section.

However, please note that this step is also optional. If you decide that student reflections are unnecessary, you can remove this step by clicking the X button in the top right corner.

Grading

Here, You can configure how many points you want to give to each process of the assignment and whether the grade should be published as a percentage or pass/fail.

By clicking configure, you can customize your grading criteria and toggle certain parameters on or off depending on the needs of the particular assignment you're setting up:

If you added the most valuable contributions step, you can click Configure next to it to set the point allocation for this step.