# Questions regarding Discourse features

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/questions-regarding-discourse-features/86015
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [April 23, 2018, 7:52am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/questions-regarding-discourse-features/86015 "2018-04-23T07:52:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 8

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### Author: ![tophee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tophee/32/73406_2.png) [@tophee](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tophee)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2018, 1:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/questions-regarding-discourse-features/86015/8 "2018-04-24T13:13:51Z")

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It’s great to have someone systematically assess discourse for use in education. You might also be interested in this topic about discourse in academia more broadly:

> [@Discourse for Academic Use Features (Done and to be Done)](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-for-academic-use-features-done-and-to-be-done/63885):
>
> I want to have a special topic about how to use Discourse for Academic Use. 1. What we already have? Markdown Supporting. Html Supporting OneBox Feature MathJax Supporting with plugin. - git clone https://github.com/kasperpeulen/discourse-mathjax I have to say it was conflict with another plugin “iframe”. If you have iframe plugin, you have to delete it. Also another plugin can do it: Footnote and Reference [https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-footnote/84533/20](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-footnote/84533/20)DOI resolver [https://m…](https://meta.discourse.org/t/doi-resolver-updated/38920)

and this blog post (if you have not already seen it):

> **[Discourse for Online Education Communities](https://blog.discourse.org/2016/08/discourse-for-online-education-communities/)**
>
> Just like our survey for game communities back in May, we once more sent out a survey to a mix of customers and self-supported Discourse communities. This time we wanted feedback from leaders in online education.

> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> I promise that it’s worlds better than the discussion tools I’ve seen in Moodle, Sakai, or Canvas

It’s important to emphasize the “discussion tools” part here. In other words: discourse clearly can’t replace a complete LMS. And the problem is that if you are already using an LMS (for whatever reason, but most likely because your school is using it) adding discourse into the picture just makes everything so much more complicated, both for students and for teachers. This raises the question of integrations or “integrability”. What would it take to integrate discourse into Canvas so that it could be used instead of Canvas’ native discussion module?

There is an excellent (and perhaps better) alternative solution, though, which already integrates into Canvas:

[![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/b/d/1/bd11302c59c3652ecf0b440f3a09f0f2cbd6d5c7.jpeg "Hypothesis in Canvas: Collaborative Annotation as Discussion Forum 2.0") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0iCSD-VChI)

I love [hyposthesis](https://web.hypothes.is/) and I think it might be more suitable a tool for online discussion because it turns the entire WWW into material for students to annotate and discuss. However (!), hypothesis’ main mission is annotation, not discussion (though the two are very closely linked and hypothesis does a decent job at facilitating discussion). So I’m [dreaming of a better integration between hypothesis and discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/special-onebox-for-hypothes-is/70946), in which hypothesis would be could at web annotations and discourse would take over once the discussion gets bigger.

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