Ed Discussion

Logo for Ed Discussion with "ed" in small caps on a purple rounded square and "discussion" in black font to the right.Sponsoring Departments - College of Natural Sciences and Electrical & Computer Engineering 
Implementation Support - ITS Canvas@utlists.utexas.edu 
Technical Support: - https://edstem.org/us/help Links to an external site. 

In 2023, the Office of Academic Technology in collaboration with ITS and the College of Natural Science (CNS) completed an evaluation of third-party discussion tools through the Learning Technology Adoption Process (LTAP). The evaluation team reviewed two tools: Ed Discussion and Piazza, with CNS selecting Ed Discussion. For more information on the evaluation process, please view the Discussion Tools Evaluation Report Links to an external site..

Ed Discussion is not a free tool. Colleges, Schools or Units that elect to use Ed Discussion will be included in a centrally administered contract, and billed back by the Office of Academic Technology for their seat counts. If you, your college, school, or unit* is interested in using Ed Discussion, please reach out to Canvas@utlists.utexas.edu.  

*The College of Natural Sciences and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have signed contracts to use Ed Discussion. Faculty/students should see 'Ed Discussion' in the left course navigation menu.

 

Table of Contents

 

Workshops

 

Getting Started with Ed Discussion

Ed Discussion is a Q&A platform designed to help students and staff communicate efficiently and effectively.

  • All your course communication in one place.
  • No more emails - questions and answers posted on Ed benefit the whole class.
  • Keep questions and posts organized under different categories.
  • Supports equations, figures, multimedia sources, and code.

 

Instructors - Learn how to get the most out of Ed Discussion

Getting Started button with a rocket ship and the text 'Set up your course on Ed Discussion in minutes'     Heading 'Using Ed Discussions' with a blue speech bubble with a question mark inside.     Heading 'Content Editor' with a blue capital A and lower case a. Subtitle 'Learn how to format and style content'     Heading 'LaTeX Guide' with a red Sigma symbol and subtitle 'Write math and chemistry equations'     Heading 'Tips and Tricks' with a yellow light bulb. Subtitle 'Get the most out of Ed Discussion with these tips!'
You may need to log in to Ed Discussion to view some of these pages.

 

Student Resources

Using Ed Discussions - from questions to answers, get started right away. STUDENT resources          LaTeX Guide - Write math and chemistry equations in Ed Discussion          Push Notifications - Receive alerts on your device for useful events
You may need to log in to Ed Discussion to view some of these pages.

Welcome Announcement

Setting up your course is easy and straightforward. It should take less than 5 minutes. The course set up wizard is the first thing you will see.

Select Continue on the course setup wizard to proceed to the welcome announcement screen. If you don't see the setup wizard, you can always post a welcome announcement manually.

The welcome announcement is an ice-breaker thread that introduces Ed to your students. A sample is filled in by default, but feel free to update and personalize the message for your class.

The Welcome Announcement screen of the course set up wizard with a pre-populated announcement.
The Welcome Announcement screen of the course setup wizard.

Click Post Announcement to continue. This will send an email to everyone in the course notifying them that there is an announcement. If you haven't invited anyone to your course yet, this will only send an email to you.

 

Welcome Announcement (Manual)

If you can't find the course setup wizard, you can also post a welcome announcement manually. Click 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. Something simple such as "Welcome" is fine. Next, fill in the text with your welcome announcement.

 

Setting up Categories

Categories are an important tool to help keep your course organized. They group threads to make it easy for students to find information related to a specific topic. To set up categories, navigate to the Course Admin page. You can navigate to the Course Admin page by clicking the gear icon on the top navigation bar.

The Admin button in the navigation bar.

In 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.

In this example, the Quizzes category has the subcategories Quiz 1 and Quiz 2
Image of categories like General, Lectures, Tutorials, Quizzes, etc. Each has a unique colored square bullet.
Subcategories as displayed on Ed.

Adding Students and Staff

The next step is to add your students and TAs to the course. You can do this from Course Admin page under the General section.

 

Adding Users from Your LMS

Students and staff can be automatically added if you are using a supported learning management system and Ed has been configured to use the latest integration.

Users table in the Admin panel to add, unenroll or resend invitations.
The Users table in the Admin panel. Click a cell to edit it, check rows to unenroll or resend invitations to those users.

 

If this functionality is available, a Sync with LMS button will appear underneath the table of users. Simply click this button and the users list will be synced based on the roster from your LMS. If this is not available you can manually add users Links to an external site. to your course. As the roster changes during the term, simply press this button again to synchronize the list.

The ↺ symbol next to a user's enrollment status designates that they entered the course from your LMS. Users added manually Links to an external site. will not be designated with a ↺ symbol and will not be affected by the Sync with LMS button.

 

Manually Adding Users

To add new users manually, you can list them in the Invite Users box. The only required information is their name and email.

The Invite Users form with three users entered into the textbox, one per line.
The Invite Users form with three users entered into the textbox, one per line.

Click Invite to add them to the course. If a user has not been invited to any Ed courses before, Invite will send them an invitation email.

For course instructors, you should choose the Admin role, for TAs and other staff, the Staff role and Student role for students. You can change these using the Course Admin page. More details can be found in the Roles section below.

 

If automatically syncing the roster is unavailable, you can also use a join link. This allows users to enter a course if they have the link. Only users with an email from your institution's domain may sign up and enter your course using this link. Any users entering a course via a join link automatically becomes a student in the course.

Join Link field to allow students to self sign up to the course by visiting the join link.
The Join Link field.

All Set

That's it! You're ready to start using your Ed discussion board!

 

Roles

This table lists the roles and their abilities on Ed, https://edstem.org/us/help/getting-started#appendix-roles Links to an external site. 

 

Black circle with an arrow pointing up to the top of the page. Top of Page

The Discussion screen
Ed Discussion
  1. On the left is a list of all active courses you are a member of. Simply click on the course name to navigate to the course.
  2. Below this, are a list of available categories for your course discussion board. You can filter threads by clicking on a category. If you cannot see these on your screen, you will need to make your window wider.
  3. In the center is the thread list. Pinned threads appear at the top of the list. Remaining threads are sorted by time, with the most recent threads appearing at the top.

The thread list shows the thread's type, its title, category, author and the time since the thread was posted. Click on an individual thread in the list to view it.

  • Threads with a blue dot are unread. These are threads that you have not seen.
  • Threads with a green tick/check are questions that have been resolved. This means that the question has already been answered.
  • Threads with a purple push pin have been pinned. Pinned threads are generally reserved for announcements or important information.
  • Threads with a blue ribbon have been endorsed by course instructors. This is usually done by instructors to distinguish high quality content.

 

Creating Threads

You can create a new thread with the New Thread New thread button button.

You can then choose if you want to ask a question, create a post, or if you are an instructor, make an announcement. Here are the differences between the types:

QUESTION - Questions should be reserved for queries that have an answer. These can be marked as resolved once a satisfactory answer has been provided.

POST - Posts are for discussion of general topics. For example, a link to interesting content.

ANNOUNCEMENT - Announcements are for sharing important messages to all participants in a course. Additionally, there is an option to send an email notification to all users. Only course instructors are able to post announcements.

 

When creating a thread, make sure to select the right category for your thread. This helps to keep the discussion tidy and makes it easy for everyone to find what they need.

Screenshot of the new thread user interface

Options

When creating a thread, students can select the following options:

PRIVATE
Only you and the instructors of the course can see this thread. You should use this if the question is personal in nature or contains your work that cannot be shared with other students.
ANONYMOUS
You will appear as anonymous to other students to the course. You are not anonymous to your instructors.

Instructors have access to more options:

PINNED
Pin this thread to the top.
ANONYMOUS COMMENTS
Comments on this thread are anonymous.
MEGATHREAD
Creates a megathread where each comment becomes a question that can be individually resolved.

More detailed explanations of these options can be found in the instructor guide Links to an external site..

 

Answering Questions

Questions appear in the thread list with a question icon. Anyone can answer questions and each question can have multiple answers. To answer a question, simply enter it into the editor provided at the bottom of the page and click "Post Answer".

Screenshot of a question showing the answer box

Accepting Answers

An answer is accepted if it is marked with a green tick/check. To accept an answer, select the tick/check icon. This can be done by an instructor or the user who asked the question. This marks the question as resolved.

Accepted answers automatically appear on top.

Screenshot of a question with two answers and the accepted answer is on top

Commenting

Comments are different from answers. Comments can be used for posting observations, replies or for asking a follow up question. If a reply to a question is not an answer, then it should be posted as a comment.

To post a comment, click on Comment under the post or question.

The comment button is highlighted underneath an answer

Searching

Above the thread list is a search bar. Here you can type in keywords to locate relevant threads. Searching can also be used to quickly and easily locate old threads. The results of a search can be further refined with filtering.

https://edcdn.net/assets/search@2x.b7d09a2f.mp4 Links to an external site. 

 

Filtering by Criteria

You can filter threads in the thread list with the Filter button underneath the search box. This allows you to quickly see threads based on a set of criteria.

The Filter menu
ALL
Shows all threads. Pinned threads are grouped at the top.
UNREAD
Shows only threads that you have not read: threads with a blue dot Blue dot.
NEW REPLIES
Shows only threads that have new replies that you have not seen since the last time you viewed the thread.
PENDING
Shows only threads pending approval. This filter is only available to instructors if the New threads require approval setting is enabled.
UNANSWERED
Shows only questions without an answer.
UNRESOLVED
Shows only questions without an accepted answer and megathreads with unresolved comments.
ENDORSED
Shows only endorsed threads.
STARRED
Shows only threads you have starred.
PRIVATE
Shows only private threads.
PUBLIC
Shows only public (i.e. non-private) threads.
STAFF
Shows only threads created by an instructor.
MINE
Shows only threads you have created.

Filtering by Category

The thread list can be filtered by category. This can be done by clicking the categories on the left side bar.

https://edcdn.net/assets/filter-category@2x.d790a597.mp4 Links to an external site. 

Click the category in the sidebar to filter threads by that category. Click the cross beside the selected category to view threads in all categories again.

 

Vendor Resources

Below are links to documentation by Ed Discussion. You must be logged in to Ed Discussion to view them.