Starting and Stopping Discussions

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:

1. Click the ≡ (three horizontal lines) button in the top-left of the discussion.
2. Open the Discussion Settings.
3. Navigate to the ‘Start or Stop the Discussion’ section.
4. Select Stop Discussion Now or Start Discussion Now as appropriate.
5. Click Save.

To schedule starting or stopping a discussion:

1. Click the ≡ (three horizontal lines) button in the top-left of the discussion.
2. Open the Discussion Settings.
3. Navigate to the ‘Start or Stop the Discussion’ section.
4. Check the appropriate box to either Start the discussion at… or Stop the discussion at….
5. Select the desired date and time.
6. Click Save.