Ed Discussion
Ed Discussion is built to be intuitive and easy to use. Setting up your course is easy and straightforward. The initial setup should take less than 5 minutes.
SUPPORT CONTACT
Support is provided via the EEE Support Team
Ed Discussion- Getting Started for Instructors
1. Adding Ed Discussion to your Canvas course space
2. Syncing your Canvas roster
3. Setting up Categories
4. Activating your Ed Discussion course
5. (Optional) Enabling Ed Chat
Appendix: Roles, Changing Badges, Tutorials, and Welcome Message
1. Adding Ed Discussion to your Canvas course space
- Start by going to the desired Canvas course space that you would like to use Ed Discussion with.
- Navigate to the course Settings area.
- Choose the Navigation tab at the top of the Settings page.
- Scroll down until you see the Ed Discussion tool listing.
- Click the “3 dots” dropdown and choose Enable.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
- Next. open the Ed Discussion tool in the Course Navigation Menu.
- Ed Discussion should open in a new tab and take you to the General setup area for that course.
- You can now continue with the steps below to complete the setup.
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2. Syncing your Canvas roster
The next step is to add your students and staff to the Ed Discussion course. You can do this from the Course Admin page under the General area and by scrolling down to the Users header.
Simply click the Sync with LMS button, choose Sync Everyone, and the user’s list will be synced based on the roster in Canvas. You will need to periodically click the Refresh button to re-sync the Canvas roster in order to keep it up-to-date during the Add/Drop period.
The ↺ symbol next to a user’s enrollment status designates that they entered the course from your LMS. Users added manually will not be designated with a ↺ symbol and will not be affected by the Sync with LMS button.
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3. Setting up Categories
Categories are an important tool to help keep your course organized. They make it easy for students to find relevant information by classifying threads into specific topics. To set up categories, navigate to the Course Admin page. The Course Admin page can be accessed by clicking the gear icon on the top navigation bar.
On the Course Admin page, select Discussion. Categories can be defined in the Categories text box. Each line is a separate category. To create a subcategory, create a new line under the parent category and indent it using the TAB key. Ed also supports sub-subcategories. To create a sub-subcategory, simply indent the category twice.
4. Activating your Ed Discussion course
Before your students can access your Ed Discussion course, you will need to Activate it on the Course Admin page in the General area.
The Course Admin page can be accessed by clicking the gear icon on the top navigation bar.
In the Course Admin page, select the Discussion area and click the Activate link at the top of the page next to the warning message.
5. (Optional) Enabling Ed Chat
Ed Chat allows you and your students to communicate one-on-one or in groups, with direct messaging and custom channels. Ed Chat has all the features of a modern messaging platform and is integrated directly within your Ed Discussion course.
- To turn on Ed Chat, head to the Course Admin page by clicking the gear icon on the top navigation bar.
- On the Course Admin page, scroll down to the Additional Features section and check the box next to Chat.
(Ed Chat is considered an early access feature at the time of writing this guide.)
- Now that Ed Chat is enabled, please take a look at Ed Discussion’s guide on getting started with using Ed Chat.
Please Note: By default, Ed Chat only allows instructors and TAs to start one-on-one direct messages (also known as a DM) with students. This ability can be extended to student-to-student direct messages through an Ed Discussion setting if the instructor deems appropriate. See the guide linked above for more information.
Appendix
Roles
This table lists the roles and their abilities on Ed:
Changing Badges
The badges for mentors, tutors, staff, and admin can be customized from the Admin page under the Advanced section. Click Save to save your changes.
Tutorials Column
The tutorials column is a way to attach additional information to the user. This is usually used to tag which class the user is in. This information will be visible in the user’s badge for tutors and above if it is added.
Post a Welcome Announcement
You can post the welcome announcement to your students by clicking the New Thread button on the top left corner of the page. This will bring up an empty post. Select the Announcement option.
Enter a title for your announcement thread. This can simply be “Welcome”.
Next, fill in the text with your welcome announcement. Provided below is some sample text you can use. Feel free to update and personalize the text for your class.
Hi everyone,
We're using Ed Discussion for class Q&A.
This is the best place to ask questions about the course, whether curricular or administrative. You will get faster answers here from staff and peers than through email.
Here are some tips:
* Search before you post
* Heart questions and answers you find useful
* Answer questions you feel confident answering
* Share interesting course related content with staff and peers
For more information on Ed Discussion, you can refer to the Quick Start Guide via edstem.org/quickstart/ed-discussion.pdf
All the best this semester!