About the Anonymous Discussion module

As its name implies, the Anonymous Discussion allows students and teachers to post messages anonymously. To help protect the anonymity of the posts, you'll find the date and time a message was posted is not shown on the pages, and the Manhattan feature that allows the author of a message to see when others have opened the message has been disabled.

There are several reasons you might want to enable the Anonymous Discussion module. For courses that involve discussion of controversial subjects, allowing students to post messages anonymously might help them to be more open than they would in the Class Discussion module. Some teachers have found that allowing students to ask questions anonymously makes them more likely to seek help when they need it. Another use of the module is to provide a place for students to provide constructive criticism of the course as it progresses.

Keep in mind that the teacher can completely delete any message posted to any discussion module. Teachers can also mark messages as teacher-hidden using the "Topic Manager" discussed in Topic Manager. Further, if you feel the Anonymous Discussion is not working out the way you planned, you can always disable the module completely.

While it's intended to be an anonymous discussion, the teacher of the class actually can assign a name to a person that' s used to identify them within the Anonymous Discussion module. This is the person's 'alias' , which you can change using the Configuration menu feature described in Change a person's name