General Questions

Purpose of These Discussions

There are several reasons to create these particular two discussion areas, 1) General Questions and 2) Introductions.

First, it gives students the chance to get to know each other in the Introductions discussion. Taking a class online can feel lonely and isolating at times, so helping to foster the feeling of community can help them realize they are all in this course together, and possibly help them forge new connections to feel a sense of community. 

The General Questions area can be a place to answer general questions as they come in, so you are only answering that question once. (Let's say you have the same question coming at you from several students, you can say, "Oh, that's a great question, I answered that in the General Questions discussion are in our Start Here module, please check for the answer there. Other students had the same question, so thank you for asking it, too.")

[To Do] Create these two discussion areas in your Start Here Module: 

• Create a discussion titled: General Questions? -  Example directions: Post any general questions you have about the course here. If you have the question, chances are another person will have the same question, so this helps to be able to answer general questions about this class so all can see the answer replies. 
• Create another discussion titled Introductions - Example directions: Please introduce yourself to the rest of the class. You can type in your introduction or you can use Studio to create a video introduction and embed it in your reply to the discussion. Let us know what interests you in the program you are in, and what you plan to do after you complete it. Also, feel free to let us know about your hobbies and interests! 
  • Some instructors try to encourage this type of connection building by making this an actual graded assignment. This Introductions discussion is a good way for them to experience replying (for possibly their first time ever) to a discussion post, and being successful with using this tool in a low-stakes setting.

(You of course can be more creative with the actual title and directions for each discussion.)

Create these discussions in the Getting Here module.

Canvas How-to's

You may refer to the Instructor Canvas Guides (Links to an external site.) for step-by-step how-tos on creating a discussion  (Links to an external site.)and adding it to your module area. (The purpose of this course is to provide online course design basics, and does not explictly include Canvas how-tos, as there are other resources for Canvas use.)