Creating a secure and moderated discussion board

Question

Hello,

I'm currently trying to create a Canvas module for my university which will cover sensitive topics during the live sessions. We are hoping to stimulate online group discussion pre and post session which would be beneficial to the course.

Given the nature of the topics, we want to ensure we have a safe discussion board environment. We feel this would need to include:

1) notification of a new post and the ability to review the post as the designated lead of the board before they are posted publicly

2) students to be able to post their comments anonymously, but ourselves as moderators able to see who is posting in order to contact them/provide support if the content of their post is concerning or inappropriate

I'm struggling to find these sorts of options available when looking to edit the discussion board blueprint on my sandbox and was wondering if it is currently possible to implement these needs?

Chris_Hofer · Accepted Answer

Good morning, @WS5 ...

Unfortunately, I don't believe most of what you are asking about exists in discussion topics of Canvas.

1) notification of a new post and the ability to review the post as the designated lead of the board before they are posted publicly

Every user in Canvas can set up his or her own notification settings.  There are notification settings that can be set up for the user's entire account, and/or the user can set up notifications per course.  For example, here are the Guides for both instructors and students (which, by the way, are quite similar):

* How do I manage my Canvas notification settings as a student?
* How do I manage my Canvas notification settings as an instructor?
* How do I manage notifications for a single course as a student?
* How do I manage notifications for a single course as an instructor?

However, to my knowledge, there's nothing that would let you preview those postings prior to making the "public" or "live" for others to see.

2) students to be able to post their comments anonymously, but ourselves as moderators able to see who is posting in order to contact them/provide support if the content of their post is concerning or inappropriate

I'm not sure if you've heard about this or are familiar with it, but Canvas has been working on a "Discussions Redesign" option that is currently in beta right now (so there still might be some enhancements and bug fixes coming down the road).  One of the things that is new in this "Redesign" is anonymous discussion postings.  However, from the documentation I've seen, it doesn't mean that you can still see the names of the people who are posting...even though they are posting as anonymous.  Here are two Guides I found for you that explain how anonymous discussions work in "Discussions Redesign":

* How do I use Discussions Redesign as an instructor... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)
* How do I allow students to create anonymous course... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Sorry that I don't have better news for you, but I hope this helps to answer your question in some way.  Please keep us posted in the Community if you have any other questions...thanks!