Why didn’t I think of this before?

Here’s something I tried today.

In Physical Geology our Discussions are research-based.
There are 2 discussion Deadlines. The first deadline is when the main research post is due.
Then there is a second deadline about a week later. The time between the 2 due dates is for editing research and replying to other students.

In the old Learning Environment we used, there was an option to set Discussion settings to allow student replies only.
Because that option is no longer available, students were posting their main research days after the first deadline had passed. Emails, News and Discussion alerts were going unnoticed.

So today, after our Unit 3 research posting deadline passed, I composed a new message that appears right above the last student Discussion message that was posted on time.

The Message Title is: Primary Research Posting is now closed.
The body of the message is:
Thank you for your posts!
No additional posts should appear above this one.

Hopefully this “News” will be noticed. Anyone who uses 2 Discussion deadlines may want to try it too.

Lorrie