Topics help your learners continue the conversation that happens along your paths.
You can prompt learners to engage in discussion around a broader theme like "Weekly Reflection" or "Share your work" and give them an easy way to find all the discussions they're interested in along your paths.
Learners can interact with the Topics you set up in the course in two places:
1) Select one or more Topics when posting a new discussion:
💡Tip: Add an optional "Prompt" to your Topics to change the default input suggested text to something more specific like this:
2) Filter the discussion feed by a Topic
Learners can explore all the discussions around their interests by filtering by one or More Topics above the Community > Discussion Feed:
Filtering by Topic is an easy way to recall and re-engage with interests without having to recall specifically where in the path the discussion occurred.
How to manage Topics
As an Admin or Library Editor, you can create and manage Topics for each course in your school. Here's where you'll find the Topic Manager:
Open Cohort Settings > Community > Topics to add or remove Topics from a particular Course. (There's also a shortcut to Manage Topics in a course from the Topic Selector.)
Open Account Settings > Configure Features > Topics to manage Topics used across all your Courses.
💡Tip: Topics can be re-used across any course, and then associated with them directly to save time and prevent the same Topic from needing to be added many different times.
Each Topic has...
A color that makes it easy to scan for posts around a theme.
A short title that's used for selecting and filtering by the Topic.
An optional "prompt" that changes the default suggested input for discussion. For example, for an "Introductions" Topic, you could add a prompt like "What would you like your classmates to know about you?" and that will replace the generic suggested text when the topic is selected.
Who can manage Topics?
Currently, only Admins and Library Editors can create, manage, and add Topics to each of your courses.
Once one or more Topics are added to a course, all roles can select them for new posts or filter by them except for Observers:
Role | Create/Manage Topics | Select Topics |
Admin | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
Library Editor | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
Course Editor | ＸNo | ✓ Yes |
Teacher | ＸNo | ✓ Yes |
Moderator | ＸNo | ✓ Yes |
Learner | ＸNo | ✓ Yes |
Observer | ＸNo | ＸNo |
What's next for Topics?
Topics were a long time coming and the current version is only a first step: we'll be making more updates to Topics in coming seasons that make them both more integrated into your paths and more engaging across paths. Stay tuned!