Brightspace has slowly been updating all the creation screens to have a unified look and layout. Next up is discussions!
This is just like the changes for Assignments and Quizzes so it will look familiar.
The New Discussion Creation Experience is now set to the opt-in option. That means you can turn it on and off. Eventually, this will become a permanent change so we suggest getting used to the new layout.
You should see this slider box when you come to the Add New Topic page in Discussions. Click the “Leave it on” button to continue or the “Turn it off” button to use the old quiz creation view.
Whether you choose to leave it on to try the new experience or turn it off, you can always come back to this slider box to toggle between the two. Click the tab at the top of the page for the slider box.
You can toggle seamlessly between both layouts. You will not lose any work by changing in the middle of creating a discussion topic.
The new layout
The primary panel of the layout contains the most frequently used fields. Others are in the collapsible boxes on right of the primary panel.
Other updates and wording changes
Besides the layout, there are a few other updates and wording changes. To learn more about each of these individual changes, please refer to this Brightspace community article for more details.
- Automatically create a new forum with same name and visibility as a new topic
- Checkboxes now radio buttons for Allow anonymous posts and Users must start a thread
- Topic type selector replaced by Manage Restrictions workflow
- Restricting topic and separate threads
- Restricting topic using groups and section restrictions
- Availability Dates
Functionally, the new and old discussion experiences are the same. There is nothing you could do with the old discussion creation that you cannot also do with the new experience.
Discussion Evaluation
The Discussion Evaluation Experience has also been updated to look like the current Assignment Evaluation Experience. If you have added a rubric, easily click each criteria to score.
For any questions or help with the new Discussion Experience, please contact the IDAT team.