Remote Teaching: Facilitate Asynchronous Class Discussions with Canvas Discussion Board

Ideas: Create asynchronous discussion activities for students using one or more of the following instructional strategies:

• Possible discussion activities:
  • Scenarios:  Provide a scenario for students to respond to based on the instructional goals/content. You could provide more than one scenario and ask students to choose one of the scenarios to respond to or assign scenarios to individuals or groups.
  • Debates and Roleplaying:  Ask students to debate a specific topic and assign students roles/perspectives they must assume for the purpose of the debate.
  • Research and Report-back:  Ask students to search for and share articles, videos, or other artifacts related to course topics. Don't forget that students can access Library resources while off-campus. 
• Instructor Tips for Online Discussions:
  • Provide clear expectations for the length of discussion prompt and the number of responses to classmates. 
    • Discussion prompt ideas and examples
  • Set one deadline for the initial post and another deadline for responses.
  • Everyone in the class can view the content on a discussion board. This is a good place for students to post content to share with the class.  If you want students to share privately with you, the Assignments tool would be more appropriate. 
  • When creating a Discussion in Canvas, you may select an option that requires students to post before they can read other posts or replies (e.g., Users must post before seeing replies).
• Directions to create a discussion in Canvas
• Canvas Instructor Guide:  Discussions