Canvas IgniteAI Discussion Summaries can help instructors quickly get an overview of what students are discussing without having to read every contribution before identifying the major themes. When enabled, the Discussion Summary feature appears (only to instructors) at the bottom of your Canvas discussion topic description. When deployed, the feature uses AI to analyze student contributions and generate a thematic summary. Instructors can also enter a specific topic or theme if they want Canvas to focus the summary on a particular aspect of the discussion. 

It is important to keep in mind that the Discussion Summary is intended as an overview tool, not as a replacement for reviewing student contributions. Canvas notes that the summary is AI-generated, reflects the latest contributions to the discussion, and may not always be accurate. It should therefore not be used for grading or as an exact representation of everything individual students have said. Instead, instructors can use the summary as a starting point for understanding the overall conversation, identifying recurring themes, or determining where they may want to take a closer look. Importantly, students DO NOT see the generated summary.

Because instructors must actively select the option to generate a summary, if you don’t want to use it simply don’t click the button. If an instructor does not want to even see the option to use Discussion Summaries, the feature can be disabled entirely from the course Settings page. Simply select Feature Options, locate Ignite AI Summaries for Discussions, and disable the feature. For instructors who do find it useful, however, Discussion Summaries can provide a convenient way to get a quick sense of a discussion’s overall themes while still leaving the instructor responsible for reviewing and evaluating the students’ actual contributions.