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All courses include a page named Discussion. When you create a course, a course-wide discussion topic named “General” is included by default.

You can add additional course-wide discussion topics to guide how learners share and find information during your course. Examples include topics for Introduction and Announcements, Feedback, or Troubleshooting. Discussions in these topics can begin as soon as your course is available.

Note: Ensure that each discussion topic in your course has a unique name, whether it is a course-wide topic or a content-specific discussion topic. Duplicate names can confuse learners. For example, avoid adding a content-specific discussion topic named “General” since this name is already used for the default course-wide topic.

Steps to Create a Course-Wide Discussion Topic

1. Open your course and navigate to Settings, then select Advanced Settings.

2. Scroll down to the Discussion Topic Mapping policy key. By default, its value looks like this:

   {
       "General": {
           "id": "course"
       }
   }

3. Copy the three lines for the “General” topic and paste them above the closing brace (}).

4. Replace the second "General" with the quoted name of your new topic. For example:

   {
       "General": {
           "id": "course"
       },
       "Questions about the Course": {
           "id": "course_q"
       }
   }

5. Ensure the second “id” has a unique identifier, such as appending a reference to the topic name:

   {
       "General": {
           "id": "course"
       },
       "Questions about the Course": {
           "id": "course_q"
       }
   }

Note: In discussion topic IDs, only alphanumeric characters, underscores (_), hyphens (-), and periods (.) are allowed.

6. Add a comma after the first closing brace (},) and select Save Changes. The platform checks the syntax and reformats your entry if valid.

7. Verify the Discussion Topic Mapping field to ensure your entry was saved as expected.

When learners access the Discussion page, the drop-down list will include the new topic you added.

Optional: To make a course-wide discussion topic the default for new posts, add a default: true attribute to the topic’s definition:

{
    "General": {
        "id": "course"
    },
    "Questions about the Course": {
        "id": "course_q",
        "default": true
    }
}