Creating an Assessable Discussion Topic

Discussion Topics can be used to facilitate a range of different activities where students share their ideas and information with their lecturers, tutors and classmates.

Some of these will be assessable tasks and activities, so associating a Rubric and linking to a Grade Item make the process of assessment transparent to students.

This guide shows the steps for creating an assessable Discussion Topic

• From your Unit Home, pull down the Communication menu and select Discussions.
• Click New and select New Forum.

New Forum Page

• Enter a meaningful Title
• Type a Description that explains to students the purpose of the Forum and the Discussion Topics in the Forum
• If you wish to apply the same Options, Availability, and Locking Options to all the Topics in the Forum, you can set them here so you do not have to apply them each time.
• If you wish to create a topic with the same title then tick that option. otherwise
• Click on the Save and Add Topic button

New Topic Page

• Enter a meaningful Title
• Type a Description that provides students with all the information they need to successfully complete the task.
• Choose to open it to the entire class or a specific group of students.
• Set any other options for this topic.
• Click on the Assessment Tab

Topic - Assessment Tab

The Assessment tab allows you to associate the Discussion Topic with a Grade Item and a Rubric. These can be set up separately, or set up as you create the Discussion Topic.

This guide assumes they have already been set up. Actual assessment can only be done with a score, but the rubric can show students what standards they are being assessed against.

• Select the appropriate Grade Item from the drop-down menu
• Enter the Score Out Of
• Click on the Add Rubric button
  • Select the rubric you wish to use
  • Click on the Add Selected button
• If you wish to assess each post individually:
  • Tick Allow assessment of individual posts
  • Select the calculation method from the drop-down menu
• Click on the Save and Close button