How do I publish or unpublish a discussion as an instructor?

How do I publish or unpublish a discussion as an instructor?


As an instructor, you can publish or unpublish a discussion in a course. Unpublished content is invisible to students, and graded discussions are excluded from grade calculations.

Note: If you use Modules in your course and add a Discussion to a Module, please be aware that the state of the Module overrides the state of all module items. You may want to consider leaving Discussions unpublished until you are ready to publish the entire Module.

Open Discussions


View Status of All Discussions


On the Discussions index page, you can view the status of each discussion. Green icons indicate the discussion is published [1]. Gray icons indicate unpublished discussions [2]. You can change the status of a discussion by toggling the published and unpublished icons.

Publish Discussion


To publish a discussion, click the discussion's unpublished icon.

Unpublish Discussion



To unpublish a discussion, click the discussion's published icon.

Discussions with student submissions cannot be unpublished. The published icon for these discussions is lighter in color to indicate discussions that cannot be unpublished.

View Status within an Individual Discussion

Within individual discussions, the discussion status is shown next to the discussion settings.

Publish Discussion

To publish a discussion, click the discussion’s Publish button. The button will change from gray to green.

Unpublish Discussion

To unpublish a discussion, hover over the published button for the content item and view its status. If the discussion can be unpublished, the hover text will confirm you want to unpublish the discussion, and the button will change from green to red. Click the button to confirm.


Content with student submissions cannot be unpublished.



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