Instructors have the ability to require that students tag new posts with topics. In order to do this, instructors must first have Topics for students to choose.
Aim to add Topics before the course starts so that they can be selected for specific course content. Topics work best when the title includes information about the content rather than only focusing on the course structure. For example, instead of using "Marketing 101" or "Week 2" as a Topic, use "Buyer Journey" or "Socially Conscious Advertising".
Why? We suggest requiring topics because they help learners find content and think twice about whether their contributions are relevant to the course material. And the "Topics" tab of our Community Health Dashboard—which tell you what students are talking about, what students aren't talking about, and which topics might need more coverage in class—are only valuable when topics are widely used.