Forums and Topics in Brightspace

The following article details the relationship between forums and topics in Brightspace along with the creation process for each.

Please note that the course layout, steps, and screenshots shown below may differ slightly for your campus.

Overview of Forums and Topics

There are two primary levels of creation when developing a discussion activity. The activity itself is called the discussion topic. In Brightspace, topics cannot exist on their own. Instead, they need to be contained inside of a discussion forum.

Forums can be designed so that each forum contains only one topic (i.e., one activity) or multiple topics. For example, you could create a “Chapter 3 Discussion” forum that has only the “Chapter 3 Discussion” topic inside of it, or you could create a forum for “Chapter Discussions” that puts all of the different chapter topics in one place.

It is important to remember that the activity portion of a discussion is the topic. If you create a forum with no topics inside of it, there will be no place for your students to participate.

When viewing the Discussions page, forums display in black lettering, and all topics inside of them display directly underneath in blue lettering.

 

Note the columns for “Threads” and “Posts.”  Within a topic, each new “conversation” that a student begins is a “thread.” Once a thread has been started, students can reply to it. Each new thread and each reply within it is a “post.” When looking at the Threads column, the number displayed there will indicate how many individual conversations have been started, while the Posts column will tally up the combined number of new threads and replies within the topic.

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Creating a Forum

1. On the Discussions page, click the blue New button and select New Forum.
2. Give your forum a name and, if desired, a description.
3. Under the description box are four options that can be turned on or left off for your forum. It is important to note that all options enabled at the forum level will automatically be applied to every topic inside the forum.
4. Towards the top of the screen, there is a tab labeled “Restrictions.” You can use the Restrictions page to set a start date and an end date for the forum, and you can specify the behavior you want the forum to exhibit outside of the start and end dates. Here again, it is important to note that all dates applied at the forum level will automatically be applied to every topic inside the forum.
   1. If a forum is set to be visible with access restricted before/after the start/end dates, students will be able to see that the forum and the topics are there, but they will not be able to click into them. The blue lettering for the topics will become black and the links will be deactivated.
   2. If a forum is set to be visible with submission restricted before/after start/end dates, students will be able to enter the topics contained in the forums (unless separate availabilities are coded into the topics directly), but they will not be able to post. This setting is useful if you want your students to be able to read previous topic threads without posting new material.
   3. If a forum is set to hidden before/after start/end dates, the forum and all topics inside of it will be completely hidden from student view.
   4. If the option to “Display in calendar” is checked, the start/end dates will be added to the course calendar and Calendar widget.

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Creating a Topic

1. On the Discussions page, click the blue New button and select New Topic.
2. After you have given your topic a title, look underneath the title area for the blue Change Forum button. That page will give you the option to either create a new forum for your topic if you do not have one already, or to assign your topic to an existing forum.
3. If this is going to be a graded activity, click where it says “Ungraded” and assign it a point value. By default, Brightspace will create a new grade item in the grade book with the same name as the topic. This grade item will not be categorized and will be added as the last item listed in the grade book. If that is not to your preference, please look at this guide for linking a discussion topic to the grade book:
   Linking a discussion topic to the Grade Book
4. Along the right side of the screen, there are menus for the following:
   1. “Availability Dates & Conditions” – Here, among other things, you can set when the topic will become available or unavailable to your students. When applying one of these dates, you can customize the behavior of your topic outside of the indicated date range.
      1. “Visible with access restricted” – This will prevent your students from accessing the topic before the start date and/or after the end date.
      2. “Visible with submission restricted” – This will allow students to access the topic so they can either review the directions or read posted that have already been submitted, but they will not be able to post anything before the start date and/or after the end date.
      3. “Hidden” – This will completely remove the topic from student view before the start date and/or after the end date.
      4. “Add availability dates to Calendar” – Checking this setting will add the start and end dates to the Calendar in Brightspace.
         Note: If your topic is set to visible but the forum is hidden or has availability restricted by dates, the settings for the forum may supersede the settings for the topic and hide it from student view.
   2. “Post & Completion” – These settings relate to how students can interact with the topic.
      1. “Default participation” – This means there are no special settings or restrictions on the topic. Students’ name will appear next to their posts, and they will be able to respond to others even if they themselves have not created their own thread.
      2. “Allow learners to hide their name from other learners” – This allows for anonymous postings by students, but names will still be visible to the instructor.
      3. “Learners must start a thread before they can view or reply to other threads” – This will require that each student start a thread before they can see what anyone else has posted.
      4. “Posts must be approved before they display in the topic” – Checking this setting will require that the instructor approve each post that a student creates before it gets added to the discussion topic.
   3. “Evaluation & Feedback” – This is about grading and how topics will be assessed. Here you can connect existing rubrics to the topic, create a new rubric, allow for individual posts such as threads and separate replies to be evaluated individually for a given student rather than assigning a holistic score, and allow learners to rate the posts of their classmates.
5. When your topic is configured to your preferences, choose whether the topic will be visible or hidden using the toggle at the bottom of the screen, then click Save and Close.

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Topic Displays

There are two different descriptions that can be provided in this creation process: the forum description and the topic description.

 

When a student clicks on the link to the topic, the default is to only include the topic description on the assignment page.  If you want the forum description to also appear, click the chevron next to the forum title, select Edit Forum, check the setting for “Display forum description in topics,” and click Save and Close. Below is an image showing what the activity page will look like when a student clicks into it.  The forum description shown will only appear there if that option is enabled in the forum settings.

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If you need further assistance or have additional questions please contact:
SUNY Online Support Services Help Desk
1-844-673-6786 | sunyonlinehelp@suny.edu