Introduction
In this article we will walk you through how to use Discussion on Topic from the perspective of a teacher.
If you’d like more information on how this tool works, you can check out the overview article here:
Discussion on Topic: For Teachers (Setting Up)
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 an Discussion on Topic activity, following the same flow as the tool itself. It will describe the process of using the active assignment. This refers to what happens after the assignment is published and available to students. It covers monitoring student progress, viewing submissions, giving feedback, and reviewing outcomes.
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 Setting Up 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.
Overall Student Progress
When you open the assignment, you'll see an overview of the overall student progress. This section shows the total grade, the completion percentage for reading the instructions, and the progress of all available steps within the tool, including discussion posts, peer discussions, selecting valuable contributions, and reflections. It offers a clear summary of the learning activity's progress.
To edit the activity, click on the three dots in the top-right corner of the screen.
It is also possible to export all the student data into an Excel file. This file contains information concerning student's discussion post, peer discussion etc. You can download this export by clicking on Export Analytics button in the overall student progress window.
Step 1: Instructions
After saving the instructions in the setup, you'll be able to view how they appear to students in the active assignment.
Step 2: Discussion Posts
In the active assignment for Step 2, you can monitor the status of each student to see whether they have posted their discussion.
Click on Full Screen to access the complete analytics view for this step.
Step 3: Peer Discussion
Step 3 of the active assignment allows you to track which students have been engaging with their peers' posts by reading, responding, and upvoting replies. By clicking the Go to the Discussion button, you can view the entire discussion thread for each student, along with replies from other peers.
Additionally, the keyword insights feature will provide you with the most popular topics or words your students mention in a learning activity. This includes reviews, comments, and discussion threads. If you click on a word, you will see an overview of all the comments that contain this precise keyword. You can click on the comment and be driven to the precise context of the comment.
Finally, click on Full Screen to access the full analytics view for Step 3. Here, you'll get a comprehensive overview of each student's progress in this step, including their participation in discussions, total comments, comments received, upvotes received, upvotes given, and time spent on the discussion thread.
Step 4: Valuable Contributions (optional)
In the active assignment, click the Show button to view the contributions that have been selected as valuable.
A star will appear on the right side of the comment if it has received a vote from a peer.
Step 5: Reflections (optional)
In this step, you can view an overview of all student-written reflections. Here, the teacher can view which groups and specific students have made progress in completing their reflections. Only the groups/students who have made progress on this step will be displayed, as shown in the image below. If the teacher wishes to read a specific student's reflection, they can click View next to the student's name to access it.
Clicking the View Reflections button will take you to the reflections playlist, allowing the teacher to easily browse through the entire list of student-written reflections.
Grading
In this step, you have to access a comprehensive overview detailing the grades of each student within the system.
If the teacher has included grading in the settings, it will be visible after the last step. The image below shows what that will look like. By clicking on the arrow on the right or using the scroll bar at the bottom, the teacher can view the rest of the grade sections (from left to right). On the far right there is also an optional grade adjustment. This allows the teacher to add or subtract points for each student. Click on Fullscreen to get a better view.