Discussions can be stopped to prevent students from making any further changes to them. This is especially useful if you’re assigning a task with a deadline, such as a piece of homework or a timed exercise in class.
About Starting and Stopping Discussions
- Discussions can be stopped, preventing participants from making any further changes to the content of a discussion.
- Notably, participants will not be able to: add, edit, or move claims; add or edit comments or chat messages; nor vote on claims.
- Discussions can be stopped and started manually, or scheduled to stop/start at a specific time and date.
- When a discussion has been stopped, a notification popup will appear informing participants they cannot make any changes.
- If a stopped discussion is scheduled to be started, or vice-versa, the notification popup will include a countdown to when the discussion is scheduled to start/stop.
- When a discussion is first created, it is started by default.
- To prevent students from making changes when they are first invited to a discussion, you can manually stop a discussion before inviting them, then either manually start the discussion or schedule it to be started at a later date and time when ready.
- While a discussion is stopped, discussion Admins are still able to edit the discussion settings, notably adjusting participant roles and changing the discussion title.
How to Start/Stop a Discussion
Note: Only discussion Admins can start or stop the discussion.
To start or stop a discussion immediately:
- Click the ≡ (three horizontal lines) button in the top-left of the discussion.
- Open the Discussion Settings.
- Navigate to the ‘Start or Stop the Discussion’ section.
- Select Stop Discussion Now or Start Discussion Now as appropriate.
- Click Save.
To schedule starting or stopping a discussion:
- Click the ≡ (three horizontal lines) button in the top-left of the discussion.
- Open the Discussion Settings.
- Navigate to the ‘Start or Stop the Discussion’ section.
- Check the appropriate box to either Start the discussion at… or Stop the discussion at….
- Select the desired date and time.
- Click Save.