Building Discussion Assignments one at a time can eat up a lot of prep work. The Assignment Builder gives you a shortcut. Just hand it your course materials, like a syllabus, an assignment sheet, or even a quick description of what you have in mind, and it puts together a batch of ready to review Discussion Assignments you can keep, adjust, or discard.
This feature is currently in early beta, and we're making improvements as we hear from instructors using it. See the note at the end of this article if you'd like to share your own feedback.
Where to find it
Go to Discussion Assignments in your course, then click Manage Assignments.
- If you don't have any Discussion Assignments set up yet, the Assignment Builder opens automatically.
- If you already have assignments in place, click Automatically Generate Assignments from the Manage Discussion Assignments page to launch it.
Note: Writing Assignments (Deep Dives)have their own separate Assignment Builder — this article covers Discussion Assignments only.
Step 1: Hand it your course materials
You have three ways to feed the builder your materials, and you can combine them:
- Paste text. Drop in your syllabus, an assignment description, or just type out what you're looking for — something like "3 discussion posts on the assigned readings" works fine.
- Upload a file. Attach a syllabus or assignment sheet as a PDF or Word document.
- Use both together. Upload a document and add your own typed notes alongside it. This helps when you want the builder to focus on one section of a longer syllabus, or when you want to specify exactly how many assignments to generate.
Step 2: Generate your previews
Click Generate. The Assignment Builder reviews what you've provided and produces a set of assignment previews.
Step 3: Review what it built
Every generated assignment is selected by default. Click the arrow on the right side of any assignment to expand it and see:
- The discussion context
- Step-by-step instructions for students
- Question and Response requirements — how many are needed, the minimum score, and the point weight for each
From here, uncheck anything you don't want, or click Deselect all and manually check only the assignments you'd like to keep.
Step 4: Save it as a draft, or publish right away
- Save as draft — adds the assignments to your Manage Assignments page marked as Drafts. Students can't see these until you publish them.
- Save and publish — makes the assignments visible to students immediately.
Either option takes you to the Manage Discussion Assignments page, where your new assignments sit alongside any you've built by hand.
Step 5: Double-check dates, then finish up
The builder tries to pull start and due dates from your materials, but it doesn't always catch them — you may see some assignments come through marked N/A. Before publishing (or right afterward), open each one to confirm its dates. While you're in there, feel free to adjust anything else — the title, instructions, requirements, whatever needs a tweak.
To edit an assignment after it's been created, click the pencil icon next to it on the Manage Assignments page — the same way you'd edit any assignment you built manually.
For more on editing assignments once they're live, see Setting Up and Managing Discussion Assignments.
Getting better results
A few tips we've picked up while this feature is in beta:
- Treat every preview as a starting point, not a finished product. The requirements the builder generates are intentionally kept simple. Check the point values and posting requirements on each assignment and adjust them to fit how you actually want to grade.
- Don't hesitate to run it again. If your first batch isn't quite there, deselect what you don't need, save a draft, and click Automatically Generate Assignments again with an updated upload or description. It won't touch anything you've already saved.
- Mix in manually built assignments whenever you need to. Add Assignment on the Manage Assignments page works exactly as it always has — use the builder to handle most of your community, and build anything unusual by hand.
- Use Edit All to clean things up in bulk. Once your generated assignments land on the Manage Discussion Assignments page, Edit All lets you update due dates, requirements, grade allocation, and more across every assignment at once, rather than opening them one by one.
This is a beta — we want your feedback
We're still actively building out the Assignment Builder, and instructor feedback is what's shaping it. Let us know how it's working for you: Assignment Builder Beta Feedback Form