Discussion Forum Needs

The ideal discussion forum needs the following features.

Whether Open edX Palm currently meets these requirements is denoted by a ✅ or ❌ for visibility.

• To define areas of the discussion to post into, called Topics in Open edX (and we shouldn’t fundamentally change discussion terminology between versions) ✅

• To allow users to post discussion threads (posts in Open edX) ✅

• To allow users to respond to those posts, and to reply to each other (responses and comments in Open edX) ✅

• Moderation features to allow staff to:

  • Restrict who can post into a topic ❌

  • Lock posts so that a conversation ends, or does not start unnecessarily ✅

  • Edit/Delete all elements (topics, posts, responses, comments) ✅

  • Set pins, to allow posts to be highlighted to users ✅

  • Move discussions from one topic to another ✅

  • Split discussion responses into their own threads when the conversation diverges ❌

  • Manage problematic content flagged by learners ✅

  • See posts in cohorts they are assigned to ❌

  • See posts in each/all cohorts ✅

  • Post to specific other cohorts ✅

  • Ban users from participating in discussions ❌

• Highlighting of staff-endorsed content ✅

• The ability to ask questions and select answers (a la Stack Overflow) ✅

• Post following, to ensure new activity in interesting discussions is easy to find ❌

• User following, to be notified and easily find content from users of note (such as staff) ❌

• Email and/or in-app notifications for new activity in followed posts ✅

• Summary emails of activity since the user’s last visit to promote engagement ❌✅

• Search and filtering functionality to find posts ✅

• Auto-moderation to define things like banned words, spam filters, and automated actions to take when a discussion is posted (such as automatically responding to let a learner know there’s a problem with their post) ❌

  • Auto-locking to prevent threads from being resurrected after a period of time has passed ✅

  • Protection from “flooding”, preventing an individual learner from posting to the same discussion thread repeatedly in a short time span ❌

• “Liking” to allow learners to express their support for a comment ✅

• “Disliking” to allow learners to disagree with a comment or signal that an answer may be incorrect without having to respond directly and potentially start an argument ❌

• Mobile-friendly display and interface ✅

  • Mobile push notifications ❌

• Social media integrations to make it easy to share posts publicly ❌

• Analytics dashboards to break down and present dashboards and data on discussion usage ❌

• Anonymous discussion and response posting ✅

  • Time-bound anonymity, hiding identities until the discussion has picked up, removing potential poster bias ❌

  • Anonymity bypass for staff to optionally be able to see who has posted anonymously ✅

• “Competition mode”, where likes are hidden until a certain time passes, and responses are sorted randomly ❌

• Emoji-based post reactions ❌

• Contextualised inline discussion embedding to integrate discussion into learning ✅

  • Discussion instructions integrated with the discussion to direct posts towards a specific task or activity ❌

• Grade awardable by staff for discussion participation ❌

  • Due dates for graded discussion participation ❌

• Automated discussion participation grading based on posting, responding, commenting, liking, and being liked by others ❌

• Permalinking - Providing an easily accessible link for each post and reply ❌

• File attachments for learners to share files from a restricted list of types ❌

• Word counts, for learners to see how many words they have written (for assignments such as “Share at least 150 words on your favourite cheese”) ❌

• Lock dates, for when a discussion will no longer accept responses ❌

• Blackout dates, for when discussions cannot be used, for things like exam periods ❌

• Automated accessibility checking and issue flagging for learner submitted content (such as “You’ve shared an image which does not have alternative descriptive text”) ❌

• Post read/unread status tracking for learners to see when there are new posts ✅

  • Manual control to mark posts read/unread for later ❌

• Access to deleted replies for staff to review malicious activity or recover accidental loss ❌

• Support for much smaller collaborative group discussions ✅

• Support for feeding out discussion posts as an RSS feed ❌

• “Post before viewing” - a setting to require learners to make a substantive post before they are allowed to see the responses of other learners ❌

• Draft saving and copying for staff to pre-prepare learner messages ❌

  • Pre-scheduled messages included in future course runs to send the same announcements to discussions at the same point in the course ❌