About Our Discussions
They make up a big part of your grade, more than any other assignment category in our class. To ignore what makes a good discussion post, the types of posts you will be writing, and when the posts are due is to seriously jeopardize your grade. Therefore, slow down please and invest some time here and learn about how to excel in our forums.
You will be asked in our forums to craft two types of posts: Initial Posts and Response Posts. Initial Posts answer all of the forum assignment questions. Response Posts respond to the posts of other students critically (that is, questioningly), extend the exploration of the assigned material, and are usually due Sunday of each week, before 11 p.m. PST.
What Makes a Good Initial Post (IP)?
A good Initial Post is one where the student answers all of the assigned questions in the forum by drawing easily and effectively on the assigned material for that week (and, if appropriate, from earlier assigned work). Show your classmates and me that you’ve done the reading and have mastered the material. In the Initial Post, the student presents their answers clearly using grammatically correct, college-level English. They write more rather than less, and fill their posts with telling examples, brief and cited quotations, and “added value.”
Added Value may be 1.) introducing relevant material from other classes, 2.) suggesting a book or article that leads the discussion down a new but relevant path, and 3.) offering links to websites that broaden and clarify the material we are studying.
What Makes a Good Response Post (RP)?
The most common mistake that students make with their Response Posts is seeing them as afterthoughts. Most leave them to the end of the week and put little effort into them. Many avoid the hard work of critical thought required in every response by becoming chatty and personal. For this reason, many Response posts wander from the assignment. They often start like this:
“I thought your post was wonderful and agree with all that
you write. I was thinking the same thing.”
That – or something like it -- is too often how they end. But it doesn't have to be this way.
In your Response Posts, don’t wander. Don’t socialize. The kind response, however kindly, does not contain a key ingredient – critical (questioning) thought. Our forums are places of intellectual labor, not socializing. Work hard on your Responses.
To that end, please put this rule on a post-it note and stick it your computer screen:
A good Response Post must do more than praise or
underline points of agreement with the views of another.
What should you aim for? The good Response Post is an extension of your Initial Post, but now aided by the thoughts of other students and by deeper reading. 1.) It deepens the exploration of that week’s themes and material by offering further examples of key points. 2.) It brings in relevant new material that clarifies and broadens the discussion and then cites where that new material came from. 3.) It politely contradicts the views of another by providing a different claim for consideration. Nor is this new claim merely asserted, but it is backed by evidence and reasons. 4.) Finally, a good response post is clear and direct and uses grammatically correct English.
What Further Things Can I Do to Excel in the Forums?
Write more rather than less. Make all of it relevant.
Number your answers. (Help your fellow classmates!)
Do not plagiarize. I encourage students to alert me to others who they feel have stolen their words and thoughts. I will hold all such alerts in confidence. See the Syllabus again on the price of plagiarism. Then avoid it.
~ ~ ~ ~
So here’s the bottom line:
The forums in our class are places where a good deal of the learning goes on. If you shirk or ignore them, the learning is crippled. It’s your education. Please seize it.
Make it your goal to show your mastery of the material by using the forums wisely and skillfully. In your posts please drop historical names, dates, and events – that is, be specific – and seek to learn from others as they seek to learn from you in what I hope will quickly become, collectively, a Community of Learning.
See you in the forums… – Mr. Van Benschoten