Canvas discussions have an upcoming set of changes (more details on their site) they’re forcing schools to adopt starting July 20,2024.
In our (albeit biased) opinion, this doesn’t really budge the needle much since it’s still a text-centric discussion, which is a bad move in this era of AI where multi-modal responses are so crucial to combat AI written text. It also doesn’t ease instructor grading workload or incorporate AI support for instructors and students. Read more about Harmonize’s product features.
I guess I would summarize it by pointing out that one of their major feature enhancements is “putting the word ‘Instructor’ next to the instructor’s name”. I know that sounds snarky, but I thought it drove the point home.
– Marcus Popetz, CEO/Founder
So I guess the question is, do you want to go through training for your instructors on another set of features that don’t really move the needle in this era of AI written content? Or do you want to give Harmonize a try?
A quick summary of their changes:
- moving replies into a split screen (side-by-side) view with the original post
- allowing users to @mention each other and quote each other’s posts
- allowing some anonymity options in ungraded/ungrouped discussions
- labeling instructors so students know who their instructors and TAs are
- allowing students to flag offensive posts for the instructor to deal with
They’re mentioning “Checkpoints” which will allow a hard coded 2 due dates per discussion, but it doesn’t seem to be part of the discussion redesign. Its release has been pushed from quarter to quarter so we have no info on how that will work yet. It’s unclear if it will be a part of the redesign.
For those more familiar with Harmonize features, onto the feature comparison:
Split Screen
We handle this with our card view so users have the entire width of the screen to focus in on the thread of the discussion vs putting it in a small sidebar so when you use the media capabilities of Harmonize, there is also more space for that to appear. The side-bar view will be constrained on smaller monitors and will limit future media capabilities if they choose to add them.
@Mentions
Seems to be the exact same as Harmonize’s implementation of this feature.
Anonymous Posting
We allow this beyond what Canvas is planning in that we allow it in grouped and graded discussions and we allow multiple modes where the users can choose for one of their posts to be anonymous or the instructor can force ALL posts to be anonymous.
Checkpoints (multiple due dates)
It appears they’re going to release this with just 2 due dates (and it’s unclear if they’ll allow configuration of what is required of each due date) and they don’t seem to be auto-grading based on those due dates compared to our Milestone feature that allows more flexibility in how many and what you require.
They are adding two features Harmonize doesn’t have, so send along feedback if you think we should add these as they’ve seldom (never) been requested:
- Reporting student posts (seldom requested).
- And generally requested by administrators vs instructors as the increased instructor workload to deal with flagged posts could add to the non-teaching burden of the instructor.
- Quoting student posts (never requested).
- Maybe never requested because we devote the entire screen to the student’s work and the replies per post so there isn’t a need to reference? No idea why.
