Using Discussions in Xen

About Course Discussions

Course discussions provide a way for learners and course staff to communicate and share ideas. Discussions can enhance learning by allowing learners to ask questions, express opinions, and help each other understand course material.

You can create discussion topics for general course-wide communication or for specific course pages. Learners and course staff can add posts, responses, and comments within these topics.

Best Practices for Configuring Discussions

To make the most of discussions in your course:

• Provide clear expectations for discussion participation.
• Use consistent naming conventions for topics.
• Seed initial posts to encourage engagement.
• Set up roles and responsibilities for moderation.
• Consider using divided discussions to separate groups.

Best Practices for Moderating Discussions

Effective moderation helps maintain a productive and respectful environment. Moderators should:

• Encourage quality contributions.
• Monitor for inappropriate content and act promptly.
• Highlight helpful posts and contributors.
• Respond in a timely and respectful manner.
• Discourage redundant threads.
• Add frequent questions and answers to course updates or FAQs.

Assigning Discussion Roles

In Xen, discussion moderation roles must be assigned manually. The available roles include:

• Discussion Moderator: Can edit, delete, and manage posts.
• Discussion Admin: Has the same permissions as moderators and can assign roles.
• Community TA: A learner with moderator-like permissions.
• Group Community TA: Similar to Community TA but restricted to specific groups.

To assign a role:

1. In the Learning Portal, go to the Staff tools tab.
2. Under Membership, choose the role to assign.
3. Add the user's email or username.
4. Select Add.

Moderating Discussions

Moderators can:

• Provide guidelines for learners.
• Develop a positive discussion culture.
• Use filters to find unread or flagged posts.
• Edit, delete, and unreport posts.
• View user profiles from discussion posts.
• Block users by unenrolling them.

Anonymous Discussions

You can enable anonymous posting by setting the following in the Authoring Tool:

• Allow Anonymous Discussion Posts to Peers: Learner names are hidden from peers.
• Allow Anonymous Discussion Posts: Names hidden from both staff and peers (not recommended).

Learner View of Discussions

Learners see discussion topics relevant to the page or general topics in the Discussion tab. Posts can be questions or open discussions. They can respond and comment within threads.

About Divided Discussions

Divided discussions restrict learners to interacting only with their own group (such as cohort or track). Topics are visible to all, but interaction is group-specific.

To manage divided discussions:

• Set them up before the course starts.
• Choose visibility per topic.
• Filter posts by group on the Discussion page.

Divided discussions help tailor communication and reduce confusion in large courses with multiple tracks.

Setting Up Divided Discussions

1. In the Authoring Tool, go to Settings > Group Configurations.
2. Choose the group type to divide discussions by (e.g., cohort).
3. Enable division for course-wide and/or content-specific topics.
4. Save your settings.

Setting Up Cohorted Discussions

If using cohorts:

1. Enable cohorts in Advanced Settings.
2. Assign learners to cohorts.
3. Mark relevant topics as divided.

This ensures that learners see and interact only within their assigned group.