VIU Campus

Graded Discussions

If discussions in your course are being evaluated, you can attach a score, rubric, and/or grade item to help facilitate giving students feedback and marks for their contributions. 

Set Up a Graded Discussion

  1. In the Discussion tool, create a new Discussion Topic by clicking the New button and selecting New Topic from the drop-down menu.

    Alternatively, if you have already created a discussion topic click the downward arrow beside it and select Edit Topic from the dropdown menu. 

  2. Click the Ungraded input field and type in the value you will be marking the discussion out of.  

  3. By default, a new Grade Item will be created for you in the Gradebook. 
    • If you wish to edit the newly created grade item or attach the discussion topic to an existing grade item, click the In Grade Book button and select Edit or Link to Existing from the dropdown menu. 
    • If you are not using the Grades tools and/or do not wish for this activity to be associated with your VIULearn gradebook, click the In Grade Book button and select Not in Grade Book from the dropdown menu.
    • If you change your mind and wish for this activity to be ungraded, click the In Grade Book/Not in Grade Book button and select Reset to Ungraded from the dropdown menu.

  4. If you will be using a rubric for the discussion assessment, click the Evaluation & Feedback tab and then click Add Rubric to create a new rubric or to add an existing VIULearn rubric to the discussion topic. 

  5. Decide how granular you want to be in your assessment.
    • If you want to give students a single holistic mark for all of their contributions to a topic, keep all the default settings underneath the Evaluation & Feedback tab.
    • If you want to score each individual post for each student and have VIULearn calculate an overall grade based on those assessments:
      1. Click the Evaluation & Feedback tab to expand the list of available options.
      2. Check the box for Allow evaluation of individual posts.
      3. Choose how you want the overall score for this topic to be calculated from the Calculation Method dropdown menu. 
      4. If you want any unassessed discussion posts to be automatically calculated as zero, click the Include unevaluated posts in the topic score calculation as zero.

  6. Once you have finished, click Save and Close.

Assess VIULearn Discussions

  1. From the course navigation bar, choose Communication and then Discussions from the drop-down menu.
     
  2. Use the drop-down arrow to the right of Discussion topic and choose Assess Topic. 

  3. Click on the Topic Score text below the name of the student you wish to assess. 

  4. All contributions that the student has made to that Discussion Topic will be listed in the pop up window. Insert any feedback you may have for the student in the General Feedback field. Give the student a score in the Topic Score field. 

  5. Once you have finished editing, click the blue Publish button to make the feedback and score visible to the student. Alternatively, click the Save Draft button to save your changes without publishing. 
  1. From the course navigation bar, choose Communication and then Discussions from the drop-down menu.
     
  2. Click the drop-down arrow to the right of Discussion Topic and choose Assess Topic. 

  3. Make sure all your students are listed on the same page. If they are not, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Click the Per Page input field in the bottom right hand corner and select 200 per page from the drop-down menu.

  4. Click the checkbox in the upper left hand corner of the table to select all the students on the page.

  5. Click the Publish Feedback button.

  6. Click the blue Yes button to confirm.