This page is for instructors who wish to grade their discussion boards.
Turn on Discussion Grading
If you don't have a discussion forum created, please see our documentation on How to Create a Forum.
- In your course, open the Discussion Board
- Hover over the name of the forum you wish to enable grading for, then click the grey down arrow
- Click "Edit"
Scroll down to "Forum Settings", then under "Grade", check either "Grade Discussion Forum" or "Grade Threads"
If you select "Grade Discussion Forum", make sure to enter the points possible in the box next to "Points possible:". You'll also want to check the box next to "Show participants in "needs grading" status after every x posts. This will notify you to grade students performance after a certain number of posts have been made.
- Click "Submit"
Grade Discussion Forum vs. Grade Threads
The "Grade Discussion Forum" option puts the entire discussion board into the grade center as one column. This means that the entire discussion board will have one grade. The "Grade Threads" Option allows you to individually grade threads within the discussion board. Please note that students cannot create threads in a thread graded discussion forum, they can only respond to threads created by the instructor.
Grade a Discussion Forum
- In your course, open the Discussion Board
- Click on the name of the forum you wish to grade
- Click "Grade Discussion Forum" (at the top of the page)
- Click the "Grade" button next to the student you wish to grade. This will take you to the grading page which will show all of the student's discussion board posts
Put the numerical grade in the top right "Grade" box, and provide any feedback you wish to send to the student
This will be the grade for all of the discussion posts, not just one of them
- Click submit to save the grade
- Repeat this process for all students who need to be graded
Grade a Discussion Thread
- In your course, open the Discussion Board
- Click on the name of the forum you wish to grade
- Click "Grade Thread" next to the thread you wish to grade
- Click "Grade" next to the student you wish to grade. This will take you to the grading page where you can see the student's contributions to the thread
- Put the numerical grade in the top right "Grade" box, and provide any feedback you wish to send to the student
- Click submit to save the grade
- Repeat this process for all students who need to be graded
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