Assessing Online Participation

The Activity Report

The Activity Report will be your main tool in reviewing and assessing students' participation in a discussion topic. This page is identical to the assignment grading interface... without the ability to enter grades, of course! (Learn more about Participating in Discussion.)

Opening the Activity Report

To open the activity report for a discussion topic (non-gradable topic), click the big blue button at the top of the main page in that topic (the "All Posts" page).

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Activity Report Overview

The activity report lists everyone in the class — including the instructor — and provides a quick overview of each person's participation in this discussion.

Students see only the information that pertains to their own performance on this page.

The number of posts plus the number of comments give a general impression of how actively involved each student was.

To see the full contents of a student's posts and comments, click SHOW to open the activity detail.

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Reviewing Posts

The activity report provides a recap of the student's performance in this assignment, including all their posts and all their comments.

As in the grading interface, you can select either a grid or a list display for your student's posts, but you will probably find the list view to be most helpful. This layout presents in the entire contents of all the student's posts here on this one page, so you can simply scroll down to see all their work.

If your default for this topic is already set to the list view, that's what will display here.
If your topic default is set to the grid view, you may want to change it to the list view, before assessing participation. Or you can simply change the view individually for each student.

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Posts vs. Comments

Keep in mind that in a discussion — in contrast to an assignment — students might not be submitting many (or any) posts. Instead, their participation may be primarily (or solely) in the form of comments. Assignments privilege posts, but in a discussion, both posts and comments are equally important.

Your participation requirements — as well as the general flow of the conversation — will determine where and how students participate in a discussion.

Reviewing Comments & Engagement

A list of all the student's comments in this discussion appears directly below her posts.

You can display the full contents of these comments for easy review.

Each comment shows the name of the individual on whose post the comment appeared. So if you want to see the comment in its original context, click that person's name — or any of the other links on the same line — to open the post in a separate tab.

At the bottom, the "Reviewed" report shows you whether or not the student has kept up with the conversation throughout the module.

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The Activity Report

Posts vs. Comments