The discussion tool can be used to have students keep a reflective journal that can only be seen by themselves and the instructor. Using the groups tool, you can easily make a discussion activity “individual” to each student.
- Go to the module or unit where you want to place the discussion
- In “Course Tools” in the navbar choose “Groups”
- Select ‘New category’
- Input the name of the category and a description of what these groups will be for (e.g. Personal Learning Journal)
- Under ‘enrolment type’, choose ‘Single user, member-specific groups’
- Under ‘Additional options’, tick the box to ‘Set up discussion areas’.
- If you have not already created a Discussion Forum (which is a category for discussion topics), it will prompt you to do so here.
- Select ‘save’.
- You then have to choose an option for your discussions. You can either choose one topic per group (in this case per student), or one thread (within the same topic) by group. The former allows for a more multi-layered series of posts, whereas the latter is more like one initial post with all subsequent posts being comments on the original post.
- Select ‘Create and next’
Source: University of Suffolk: How to set up a reflective journal for students
