If the discussion you created is going to be graded, you can enter the students' marks directly through the discussion topic. Note that the grading interface will only be available if you have entered a Maximum Score in the Assessment tab when editing the topic.

To grade your students' posts,

1. Go to Course Tools -> Discussions.
2. Click the drop-down arrow beside the Topic's title and choose Assess Topic.
3. You will see a list of all students in your course. Click Topic Score under a student's name to grade that student.
4. A new window will open. At the bottom of the window, you will see all threads and replies that the student created in the Topic. Above that, you will see a text feedback area where you can provide detailed feedback to your student, and a space to grade the student out of the maximum Topic Score can be found at the top right of the window. If you have a Rubric linked to the Topic, it will also be displayed here for you to use when grading.
5. When you've finished entering the student's marks and feedback, click Publish (to immediately release the student's grade) or Save Draft (if you intend to release all students' grades at once when you're finished).
6. Repeat the process for each student in your course.

Publishing Draft Feedback

If you saved your students' marks as Draft, you can release them all at once:

1. Go to Course Tools -> Discussions.
2. Click the drop-down arrow beside the Topic's title and choose Assess Topic.
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen. At the bottom right, if your students are being displayed across multiple pages, change the selector to show 200 per page.
4. When all of your students are being displayed on one page, click the multi-select checkbox at the top left of the table of student names to select everyone, and then click Publish Feedback above the table to make the marks visible to students.

Video: Grade a Discussion Topic