1. Make sure to assign points to your topic.
2. Go to Discussions.
3. New Topic.
4. Grade out of (choose your points and choose to whether link it to the grade book or not).
5. Click save and close.

Here you can also choose an (already existing) forum, or you can create a new forum for the discussion.

• Once points have been assigned to the topic go back to the main discussion page.

The screen below will appear. 

Click on the arrow of the topic you want to asses and click on Assess Topic.

Next, click on Topic Score of any student to start the assessment. A pop up screen will appear, as shown below.

1. Add a score
   • NB This grade will be transferred to the Gradebook, if a grade item is associated.
2. Add General Feedback as desired.
3. Here you can see an overview of all the posts of the student in this specific topic.
4. Here you can add a document to the evaluation.

Now you can either Publish your evaluation or Save Draft.

• If you choose Publish, the grade and feedback will be immediately visible for the student.
• In case you want to release grades and feedback to all students at the same time, opt for Save Draft.

After you have clicked Publish or Save Draft the pop up screen closes automatically. Now you can start the assessment of another student's contribution.

Finally, when you're done assessing, select all students and click on Publish Feedback. This will release all grades and written general feedback for this discussion topic.

• Go to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
• Click on Discussions. 
• Click on a Topic title and navigate to a Thread.

The screen below will appear.

From the View Thread screen, click on the arrow next to a student's name in a post or reply and click on Assess Student.

1. Add a score
   • NB This grade will be transferred to the Gradebook if a Grade item is associated.
2. Add General Feedback as desired.
3. Here you can see an overview of all the posts of the student in this specific topic.
4. Here you can add a document to the evaluation.

Now you can either Publish your evaluation or Save Draft.

• If you choose Publish, the grade and feedback will be immediately visible for the student.
• In case you want to release grades and feedback to all students at the same time, opt for Save Draft.

After you have clicked Publish or Save Draft the pop up screen closes automatically. Now you can start the assessment of another student's contribution.

To Publish all the Feedback (release the grades and feedback to the students) you must navigate back to the Asses Topic List view.

Click on the arrow of the Thread Title and click on Assess Topic. The screen below will appear.

Finally, when you're done assessing, select all students and click on Publish Feedback. This will release all grades and written general feedback for this discussion topic.

In order to allow assessment of individual post, you need to change some settings on the assessment tab of a Topic within a Discussion Forum.

Click on Edit topic and the below screen will appear.

1. Check the box of Allow assessment of individual posts.
2. Choose a calculation method. Depending on you calculation method it will result in a Topic Score (i.e.: the grade) that will be transferred to the Gradebook.
3. Decide what you want to do with the scores of the posts you did not asses:
   • Do not check this box if you do not want to take the unassessed posts into account in the calculation. The calculation will ignore these posts.
   • Check this box, if you want to treat unassessed posts as 0. This will influence the Topic Score.

Now you can add a score per individual post/thread.

Recommended: Opt for Save Draft.

• The calculated score will only be shown/updated after you have clicked on Publish/Save Draft.
• If you opt for Save Draft, you can still make some changes in case the result of the calculation is not as expected.
• In case you click on Publish the grade for this Topic will be automatically released to this student.

Finally, when you're done assessing, select all students and click on Publish Feedback. This will release all calculated grades and written general feedback for this discussion topic.

The Rubrics tool is used to evaluate an activity or item based on a predefined set of criteria. They help ensure that activities and items are evaluated fairly and consistently. The Rubrics tool allows you to create analytic rubrics (multiple criteria) or holistic rubrics (one criterion). Once a rubric has been created and is now linked to a discussion topic, you can then grade the students based on the rubric.

Have a look at the video below. In the tutorial they use a rubric while assessing a discussion topic.