Announcing Ed Discussion
The campus is pleased to announce the selection of Ed Discussion as the tool to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous online discussions in courses at UC Berkeley. It is currently available, and you can access it from bCourses* or edstem.org. Other discussion tools, such as Piazza, will no longer be licensed by the campus after August 2022. In addition, the use of Piazza for individual licensing will be prohibited to ensure equitable access to course materials for all students.
*For more information on accessing Ed Discussion from bCourses, see our help article How do I add Ed Discussion to the Course Navigation?
Process
This decision was made after a rigorous Request for Proposal (RFP) process that included a review committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students. Ed Discussion received the highest score from the committee in all categories of functionality, accessibility, integration with campus systems (bCourses/Canvas LMS), business experience, and references. We appreciate the committee's thorough review of multiple tools and are confident that Ed Discussion is the best solution for our campus needs.
Features
Ed Discussion offers robust features, including threaded discussions, embedded media, attachments, integration with bCourses, runnable code snippets, Markdown and LaTeX formatting, moderation, analytics, and reporting. To learn more about Ed Discussion, please see our Online Discussions service page.