How can we help?

You can limit the window for student contributions within a discussion by choosing when to start and stop it. This is especially useful if you’re assigning a timed exercise or a task with a deadline.

About Starting and Stopping Discussions

• Discussions can be started or stopped, preventing participants from making any changes to the content of a discussion before or after a specific time period and date.
• Discussions can be started or stopped manually, or scheduled to start/stop at a specific time and date.
• When a discussion has been stopped, a popup notification appears informing participants they cannot make any further changes.
• If a stopped discussion is scheduled to be started, or vice-versa, the popup notification 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, you can either manually start the discussion or schedule it to start at a later date and time.
• While a discussion is stopped, discussion Owners and Admins are still able to edit the discussion settings.

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 ≡ Discussion Menu icon in the top-left of a discussion.
2. Select Settings.
3. Scroll down 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 ≡ Discussion Menu icon in the top-left of a discussion.
2. Select 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.