Finding out whether someone else has already asked the same question or initiated a conversation about the subject that interests you, and then reading and contributing to that exchange instead of starting a new one, helps make the time that everyone spends with the course discussions more productive. You can search for something specific, or you can browse through the posts in a single discussion topic.
To search for text, click All Discussions and enter a phrase, a word, or part of a word in the Search all posts field above the list of posts. When you press Enter, the search tries to find:
Every post in the course discussions has an associated topic. When a participant creates a post, the participant selects a topic from a list of topics that the course team has provided. You can look through topics in the discussions to find one that you’re interested in.
Discussion topics for edX courses can be course-wide or content-specific.
On the Discussion page, you can view both course-wide and content-specific discussions. Click All Discussions in the upper left corner of the left pane to see all discussion topics in the course. To see all the discussions in an individual topic, click the topic name.
Note that course-wide topics do not have other topics indented below them, while content-specific topics are indented under a category name. For content-specific topics, you can click either the category name to see all the posts in that category, or you can click an individual topic name.
Content-specific topics are located in specific units in the course. They typically appear below the content they apply to.
You can access a content-specific topic by viewing the unit that contains the topic. To see the discussion, click Show Discussion.
You can also use the Discussion page to access a discussion in the unit where that topic is located.
To limit the posts shown on the Discussion page, you can select one of the filter options. Above the list of posts, the Show all filter is selected by default.
Pinned posts appear at the top of the list of posts when you view all discussions. Pinned posts can contain important information about the course or any part of the course, such as a particular video or problem. The pinned post may originate from anyone in the course, including students and the discussion moderation team, but only members of the moderation team can pin posts.
You can review all the posts, responses, and comments that a specific participant has made. You can select other learners, or members of the course team. To do this, click the username that appears at the top of any of the participant’s contributions. A page opens that shows the following information about the participant.