BLEND-ONLINE] Looking for private, Reddit-style vote up/down discussion tool
From: The EDUCAUSE Blended and Online Learning Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Sharon Strauss Sent: Friday, June 03, 2016 10:46 AM To:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [BLEND-ONLINE] Looking for private, Reddit-style vote up/down discussion tool
Hello,
Thanks for all the online and offline responses. A quick summary of where I am with this project, and the various solutions offered.
Piazza–Piazza will integrate with our LMS via LTI and we do have it. As far as I can tell, after some initial enthusiasm for it a few years ago, nobody here has been using. Thus, I cannot speak to the spam issue that Nina raised. Still, I looked at it and do not see any vote up/down option on it. It is structured more as a Q & A organizer. There is an option for professors to rate an answer as good or bad, but that it is different from a popular vote.
WordPress Theme or Plugin–I found a couple of vote up/down WordPress solutions. However, as far as I can tell, none are actively maintained. The most recent I saw is a couple of years old.
Google Moderator–This looks like it may have been just what we want, but Google retired the program last year. Currently you just get the message, “We’ve retired Google Moderator. The site is no longer available in any form, but you can get to data from past Moderator series through our “Download your Data” tool.
Brightspace–May work for those that have it, but we do not.
Canvas–Perhaps another area where it beats Moodle. However, we do not have it and I’m not sure we want to get it at this time.
Drupal–This might work! I did not see an up/down vote option with http://skill-tree.org, but it seems there are a few options. I’m looking into this further.
Commercial options–I got suggestions for commercial software such as http://crowdicity.com and https://www.uservoice.com/. Both seem like they could work, but I don’t know if we have a budget for this.
FYI, I got more detail from the professor about the project. I learned he is not looking for a classroom solution. He is looking to lead a potentially sensitive and controversial campus-wise conversation. Thus, this might not be the best place to have posted. Still, maybe someone else on the list will also find this useful.
Special Interest Group: Learning Spaces and Instructional Technology (SIG) webinars are FREE and open to anyone. Please feel free to share this with others at your institution.
This session will describe an approach to online discussions that moves beyond the threaded message boards of D2L Brightspace, yet still maintained an asynchronous online delivery. Using teams, discussions were differentiated by product to allow students to turn in an artifact that represented their shared understanding during specific online course modules. Strategies, Technology guides, rubrics, and student feedback will be shared.
Presenter: Michael Manderfeld
Senior Instructional Designer
Minnesota State University Mankato
44. Teaching in an online environment should be a team effort. You should be
able to call upon technology specialists, instructional designers, and many
others to help you develop and implement your course.
Q:
Customer was having problems with D2L in Google Chrome. Client was not able to see discussion posts in D2L. However, it seems to be fine in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.
Scroll window is small and have to scroll down to see all the posts
A:
This is a known issue with Chrome.
To display the full discussion screen, simply grab the vertical frame divider (click and drag it) and move it a little. The rest of the screen will sort itself out.
Q:
How do I access Report capabilities so that I can see how many students, and which students, entered a particular content topic as well as discussion list?
A (for statistics with discussion list, please scroll down to the bottom):
To view the how many users have visited a topic, please go
Q: the instructor does not want the students to see each other D2L discussion entries across groups
A: When creating the groups and after selecting “New Category” look down for a checkbox “Set Up Discussion Areas.”
If the box is not checked, students will be divided into groups, but continue seeing each other posts.
Selecting the areas will constrain the discussion to be seen only within the group.
Discussion will include the use and efficacy of the tool. CourseBuilder as the focus of other tools: e.g. Content, Manage Files, Discussions, Dropbox, Quizzes, Grades, Competencies
Drag and drop interface and faster organization of the D2L course
Please share at d2L@stcloudstate.edu days and times when you would like additional appointments. http://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims
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