How to match replies with original subject
Asked by Ian Campbell:

A class of 15 students write an essay each on the same subject and post it in 'Add Comment' to a Card with the essay title in a List called Writing Topics. Each student then Replies to each other student saying one thing they like in the other's essay, and one thing that would make it better.

It is potentially a very useful and enjoyable exercise.

The trouble is that the Replies do not attach or group themselves around the original essay Comment in the List. They just appear above in chronological order, and the original writer has to go hunting for them. This soon becomes a tedious and discouraging chore.

Is there some way that Replies to a Comment can be attached or grouped with that Comment, rather than appear randomly in chronological order?

\[Terminology edited in line with Iain's comment below.\]


Answers:
author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Ian Campbell](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1156984) are they not adding comments to each essay card?

comments: author: Ian Campbell
body: They click 'Reply' on a student's essay card, but their reply goes to the top of the page to sit in chronological order - it doesn't remain beside or inside the card.

Is there something else they should be doing?


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Ian Campbell](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1156984) I think we may have some terminology problems. Just to clarify, these are the interface elements I'm referring to:

![2019-02-27 at 10.52 am.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/47088iFDE83217F2BA19B6/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "2019-02-27 at 10.52 am.png")


author: Ian Campbell
body: Ah yes, I think you are right.

When I said the students post their replies on individual cards on the List, I should have said they post their replies on an 'Add comment' on the essay card.

So the List is called 'Writing Topics', and in the list are a number of different writing topics/essay titles. One topic on one card is chosen, and then students type their essays into a 'Comment' box, and type their feedback on others' essays into the 'Reply' box.

I hope that's clearer and sorry for the confusion (I'll edit the original problem when I have a moment).

So now you can see how, with 15 students inputting essays and replies to others' essays the Card quickly becomes a mish-mash of Comments.

I had a quick look at the 'Filter' option yesterday, and saw also a reference to some 'power-up' that might help arrange things such that a student's essay and the replies to that essay can be seen together. However, I haven't yet found a filter that works on content, which might help.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Ian Campbell](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1156984) I think a better way to structure this would be:

1 list per topic

1 card per student

Students post their feedback on each others' cards


author: Ian Campbell
body: Thank you for your suggestion Iain.

In itself it definitely helps to reduce the confusion of essays and replies in the one List.

However, there are some problems with it too:

- I already have 21 lists on different subjects (not essays) on the Trello. So to add 15 more may make the user experience unwieldly.

And then I couldn't keep adding 15 more lists with every new essay.

So if I try out the wieldliness of an extra 15 lists, at the end of the exercise, I would need to delete or amalgamate the first 15. I don't want to delete students' hard work, which also remains a continuing learning and revising resource. So how I could I amalgamate them? I could move each card into a another List called, say, 'Past Writing' or 'Essays we have written'. This empty List would then contain 15 essay cards with their replies on topic A. After the second essay, I would put another 15 cards in there, so now we have 30 jumbled cards and replies. This may not matter so much as it becomes historical, but not ideal.

OR I could simply amalgamate the 15 essays (written in Description) and comments into individual lists on one topic each. This might be better.

- Other slight disadvantages are that I cannot put a cover picture onto each topic, and I cannot use Description for my guiding words.

I will give it a try and see how it goes.

And if you can think of a way to use Filter or a power up to alleviate the problem, please let me know.

Many thanks


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Ian Campbell](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1156984) reducing horizontal scrolling as your number of essay topics increases can be solved by:

1) Having one board per topic, with lists representing stages of work or breakdown of students by group (eg. first letter of last name, lists called "A-G" etc. to reduce vertical scrolling) and then having a "board of boards" where each topic has a card linked to the board, this article shows you about linking boards/cards together:

<https://blog.trello.com/related-cards-related-boards>

2) Keeping it all on one board but then having an "Past Topics" board where people can go to find past topics -- from your main board simply click through three little dots at the top right of the menu to move it to your past topics board. Students can use the browser find text feature to locate a past topic on a long right scroll -- you can streamline this further by breaking down your past topics by year and term. In that case, you could then have a "board of boards" which linked to your past essay topic archives (as above) but still keep it simple for current students by having one current topics essay board where they can always go to make their latest submission


author: Ian Campbell
body: Thanks Iain.

I'm looking to see if I can make this work - keeping each writing topic **in** the main board.

One thing that might prove a hurdle is that with the 'related cards-related boards' feature, clicking on the link takes you **out** of your board and into the related one. At the least I would want it to put the the second board in a new tab.

(Students can be warned to do this manually themselves, I know. But they will not all be present at one time, they will need to be individually shown, and they are not necessarily very computer literate and have so much to learn with the system that the simpler the system can be, the better it will be too.)

However, that's just a first reaction. I may find simple work-arounds when I can spend time on it.