Create a Discussion in Scholar Ultra Courses

Scholar Ultra Courses has two methods of providing access to discussion spaces where students can engage with instructors and students. The first  is to create discussion spaces directly in the dedicated Discussions section of the course.  The second is to create links to individual discussion spaces in your Course Content Feed, which can be organized alongside the rest of your course.

Creating Discussions in Dedicated Discussion Space

The link to the Discussion space is shown on the top bar of each Ultra course. 



At the top of the space, you will see two buttons: New Folder, and New Discussion, as well as a gear icon. 



New Discussion will allow you to create a new Discussion directly inside the space, while Add Folder will allow you to create organizational folders, which can be used to sort discussions by category. Discussions can then be created inside folders. 



Finally, the gear Icon will open Discussion settings, which primarily consists of whether students are allowed to create discussion topics themselves. 

Starting a new Discussion will open the main page for that discussion's forum. Give the forum a name, and a description for what the Discussion in question will be about. 

This space will also allow you to alter the settings for this specific discussion. To open the settings, click the gear icon on the upper right hand side of the screen. 

This will open up the full list of settings for a Discussion. This includes whether the discussion is visible in the Course Content feed, whether the activity in the discussion is visible before any given student posts to it, whether students will be able to edit or delete the posts they make to a discussion, and whether participation in a discussion will generate a grade for students.  From here, you can also assign a discussion to a specific group, if you have already created student groups. (Will link to Groups once that article is complete)

Selecting the option to grade participation in the Discussion will make additional options appear, such as due dates and point values for participation in the discussion. The ability to grade participation using a rubric will also be available at this point. 

To save your settings, click "Save" at the bottom of the settings list.

Creating Discussions In Course Content Feed

To create discussions in the course content, click the plus sign where you want it to go, then click Create.

Scroll to the Participation and Engagement section, and select Discussion. 

 A discussion space will open, with identical settings to those made directly in the main Discussions space. When you click Save, the discussion will be set to the Course Content Feed and ready to accept responses from students. 
Note: A Discussion made using this method will also be visible inside of the dedicated Discussion space. This method essentially creates a Discussion in that space, but also includes a shortcut that is visible in the Course Content feed.