My students loved Discourse. . . instead of just having a classroom of 30 students, the conversation widened to include 90 students. I just used it as a supplement, not as learning management tool. Student writing improved when they know that in addition to me my classmates would read what they wrote.
The problems for me were. . .
- keeping up with the grading. . . there was no way to click easily see all the posts expanded by a user
- it was difficult to deal with the end of the term, i.e. deactivating the users permanently