Ed Discussion

Ed Discussion supports learning through rich and engaging discussion forums and chat rooms.

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What is Ed Discussion?

Ed Discussion is an online threaded discussion platform that allows instructors and students to interact asynchronously by posting comments and questions, files and more to customised discussion forums.

Teaching and learning applications

Ed Discussion facilitates communication between teaching staff and students with capabilities beyond the LMS native discussion or chat tools.

It provides for rich question and answer forums with added functionality such as highlighting supported responses and instructor posts, and provides for subject chat rooms and channels similar to Discord and Slack. The discussion board posts can be categorised, private or anonymous as appropriate.

Discussion posts can allow users to:

  • Post and annotate images
  • Embed videos
  • Upload documents
  • Use symbolic mathematics via LaTeX equation editor
  • Collaborate on and run code snippets with support for multiple programming languages.

Access and licensing

All University of Melbourne LMS users have access to Ed Discussion through the University licence. Staff and students can access Ed Discussion through their LMS subject.

Getting started

  • Enable Ed Discussion in your subject by going to Settings, click on the Navigation tab, drag Ed Discussion into the top section and click Save.

Note: To avoid confusion, you may wish to remove the link to Canvas Discussions at this time by clicking on the three dots beside the Discussions link and selecting Disable.

  • Click on the new Ed Discussion link in your subject navigation menu to open the Ed Discussion subject settings.
  • Follow the prompts to customise your discussion board. We recommend referring to the Ed Discussion help pages for guidance.
  • When ready to publish, click Activate your subject in the yellow banner at the top of the page.
  • You can find all of your discussion threads by clicking the discussion icon on the top toolbar.

Support and resources

Ed Discussion is supported by Learning Environments. Please submit a support request for assistance.

Vendor guides for staff

Vendor guides for students