Online discussions can be a great way to extend conversations started in a classroom. Or in the case of online courses, a great way to build engagement and interactivity in your course. “A well-designed and well-facilitated discussion board can be a rich space for active learning.” (Riggs and Linder, 2016)

Canvas has a Discussion tool that can facilitate online discussions which can be graded or ungraded. If graded, you can use a rubric for grading if appropriate for the discussion. Some options the Discussion tool offers include attaching files if needed for the discussion, having users post before ever seeing another student’s reply or even an “allow liking” feature which allows students to tag (like) other classmates posts. If you have extremely large classes, it is possible to break your class size up into smaller groups and hold online discussions within these groups.

To learn more about threaded versus a focused discussion, or some of the additional features of the Discussion tool, visit What are Discussions from the Canvas community. If you want details on how to build Discussions in your Canvas course site, see

How do I create a discussion as an instructor?


Shannon A. Riggs and Kathryn E. Linder, Actively Engaging Students in Asynchronous Online Classes, IDEA Paper #64. December 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.ideaedu.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/IDEA%20Papers/IDEA%20Papers/PaperIDEA_64.pdf