In Brightspace, it’s possible to create groups to subdivide students into. Next, you can e.g. create group assignments and have students discuss topics. To gather more information about groups, it’s good to read the other manuals about Groups first, before reading this one. 

Navigate to ‘Course Management’ > ‘Groups’ in the top yellow bar. Here, you can see the groups you have made.Next, click on the arrow next to the group that you want to add a Discussion Topic to. In the drop-down menu that appears, select ‘Edit Category’.Check off ‘Set up Discussion Areas’ under ‘Additional Options’.Below, you see multiple different options: 

• Under ‘Forum’, you can create and select a new discussion forum.
• Click on ‘Create new topic’ to create a new topic.
• Click on ‘Attach to existing topic’ to create a new thread within an existing topic. 

Finally, don’t forget to click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the page. After selecting ‘Create a new topic’, you will be shown the following screen.‘Create one topic per group’: 

Choose this option if you want to create a separate discussion topic for every group inside of a group category. For example: if the group category ‘Seminar’ includes two groups, then two topics will be created: one for group 1 and one for group 2. By choosing this option, you can cause some topics to only be seen by specific groups, which means students won’t be able to see the topics of other groups. 

‘Create one topic with threads separated by group’: 

Choose this option if you want to create one topic where every group can have its own threads. Students from different groups cannot see the threads of other groups. According to your wishes, add a title and description under ‘Title’ and ‘Description’. Then select ‘Create and Next’ to save your topic and potentially make a new one. 

When you follow the first few steps of this manual again, you will see a new option on the bottom of the ‘Edit Category’ page: ‘Existing Workspace’. Below, you will see the topic you have created. In this example, that is the Seminar Group Discussion.When you click on the blue discussion topic, the following screen is shown. Here, you can make changes to the topic by using the three blocks on the right of the screen.Below ‘Availability Dates & Conditions’, you can choose a start date and end date for when the topic should be visible to students.Below ‘Post & Completion’ you can choose one of the top three options that are about the anonymity of students in the topic. You can also check the last option so posts have to get approved before they get posted.Below ‘Evaluation & Feedback’ you can change options about the topic with regards to grading.Next, click on ‘Save and close’ on the bottom of the page to save your choices. A screen now appears where you can see the topic you just made.When you return to the screen where the groups you’ve made are shown (‘Course Management’ > ‘Groups’ in the top yellow bar), you now also see the discussion topic that have been linked to the groups.