Discussion Analytics

• This page will assist lecturers to understand the discussion analysis components on the discussion Grade and Participation page

• Discussion analysis is available for Graded Discussions for courses delivered in English.

• Discussion analysis refreshes nightly for active discussions. If there is no new discussion activity on a given day, the data will not be updated.

• You'll see data in the Discussion Analysis panel if the student has participated within the last four months.

• Only instructors and graders see the discussion analysis.

• On the Discussion Settings, select the option to Grade Discussion when the discussion was created.
  

An example of Grade and Participation page for an individual student.

The meaning of the discussion analysis component

Discussion analysis provides a closer look at how your students participate in discussions. As you grade a discussion, you can use these metrics to help determine a grade:

• Substantive posts: The number of responses and replies that contribute to the discussion's development.
• Sentence complexity: Average grade level readability for the student's posts as measured with the Flesch-Kincaid linguistic standard.
• Lexical variation: Count of content words and functional words. Content words support the student's ideas, while functional words support proper grammar.
• Critical thinking level: Percentage of words and phrases within a student's total posts that demonstrate critical thinking.
• Word variation: Percentage of unique words in a student's responses and replies.

Read more about class and group discussion analytics, and how critical thinking is measured......