Post 392: The Importance Of Having Conversation Threads in a Forum and LMS

Post 392: The Importance Of Having Conversation Threads in a Forum and LMS

Apparently, Canvas does not have conversation threads. It is just one long conversation and you can only press reply for the next response.

Having conversation threads in an LMS is important because then teachers can assign different threads for different conversation topics.

If a teacher wants to ask other questions relating to other core concepts of the class, the teacher has to mix it all up in one long forum conversation in Canvas which is confusing for the students and the teacher.  When I ask other questions that would belong to different threads and it is all one long conversation stream, it makes the forum look disorganized and disjointed from the discussion.

Having no conversation threads means that the forum can only be about one topic only which is very limited and boring for the conversation.

Also, I cannot assign students to be responsible for their own conversation threads, so that they respond to all students in their threads. Instead, it is all one jumble of posts. To me, this is not very organized and it is hard to understand what is going on.

This Youtube Video gives alternatives to how to create threads in Canvas:


Advantages of Having Conversation Threads

1. Organization Of Different Topics In the Forum

2. Allows the Teacher To Assign Different Topics For One Week

3. Allows students to take charge of their conversation threads

4. Allows teachers to readily see who has participated and who has not.

5. Talking about one topic per week is not realistic given in a real class, students and teachers talk about various topics per week and even per lecture.

Right now, there are no conversation threads in my Canvas forums, which means if I want to ask other questions, it is mixed in with the main topic and I do not have the ability to create a new thread since there is no create a new thread button in Canvas.


Hopefully, Canvas will update its system to include and put back conversation threads so that students can talk about different topics, and teachers can assign different fun topics to make for a more interesting conversation.