New Discussion Creation Experience

In an effort to make activity creation consistent across tools in Brightspace, D2L has recently introduced the New Discussion Creation Experience – a redesigned interface for creating and editing Discussion topics. The interface is similar to those found in the Quizzes and Assignments tools.

The New Discussion Creation Experience is now the default option for creating and editing Discussion topics in Brightspace. For a period of time, however, instructors have the option to switch to the old interface if they wish to do so.

NOTE: This change applies only to Discussion Topics. No changes have been made to the way Discussion Forums are created.

> Accessing the New Interface

To open the new interface proceed as follows:

  • In the course navbar, click Communication and select Discussions from the dropdown menu.
Image: Accessing Discussions in the navbar
  • On the next page, click New and select New Topic.
    Image: Creating a new Discussion topic
  • The New Discussion Creation Experience interface will open.
Image: New create/edit interface for Discussion topics

> The Layout

The settings available in the New Discussion Creation Experience are labelled with numbers in the image below. Each setting is further explained below the image.

Image: The Layout of the ‘New Discussion Creation Experience’

The main part of the topic creation window contains the following settings:

  1. Topic Title
  2. Forum creation options (create a new one or assign the topic to an existing one)
  3. Grade Out Of box (when you click this box, the option to link to the grade book will appear)
  4. Description box

On the right side of the screen, you can find three expandable boxes for the following settings:

  1. Availability Dates & Conditions
  2. Post & Completion
  3. Evaluation & Feedback

At the bottom of the screen you can find:

  1. Save & Close, Save, and Cancel buttons
  2. A toggle to control the visibility of the topic (the default setting for Discussion topics is ‘Visible’)

> Turning the New Interface ON and OFF

To switch between the old and the new interface, proceed as follows.

  • In the Discussion creation window, locate the downward arrow in the top right corner of the screen. Click the arrow.
Image: Switching between old and new interface
  • A new window will open. Select Turn it off to work in the old interface or Leave On to continue working in the new interface.
Image: Turning the new interface on and off

NOTE: You can switch between the old and the new interface at any time without losing any information you have entered.

Video Overview