This is the most important part of the course, worth 150 out of 450 possible points. Really 190 if we include the weekly ‘share’. This is where you show me that you’re reading, engaging the material (readings, discussion, and online lecture material), and putting it together. That is, learning. Students need to participate in discussion every week to gain those points. Here’s what expect:

• Complete the discussion while everyone else is (i.e., no going back three weeks later); students are entitled to two make-ups over the course of the term (description below)
• Your weekly posts—One major posting for each thread I create in the discussion board for the week, and at least two thoughtful replies responding to other students’ posts. This means you could easily have up to six or eight per week (often I’ll have two questions to frame the week’s discussion). Bare minimum one post per prompt, and two meaningful replies, showing what your gleaned from the week’s source material.
• Posts should reflect thought and intellectual effort. There are 9 points possible for posting, and 3 points for the quality of the posts (that’s the 12/week for participating in the forum). This is somewhat subjective, I agree, but I will be looking for evidence of thought—maybe the post is modest in length, but condensed and full of meaning and significance. I’ll be looking to see that it reflects some preparation and intellectual effort on your part. If I can’t tell for sure from your posts that you’ve done the readings from the week, or whether it looks A.I.-generated, don’t expect high marks. Bringing in outside sources you’ve looked up is encouraged. So it’s not just length, although it’s very hard to show evidence you’ve been reading and thinking about a topic in a couple of sentences. The discussions are where you demonstrate your learning.
• Citing sources—if you bring in other sources (a great idea, it shows that you’re making connections between course material and the real world), provide the source at the end of your post (a hyperlink or APA or some other common format). It’s just practice, and it will make this a more automatic process for you and improve your paper-writing efficiency.

There are several kinds of postings that can gain you credit, for instance:

• You can pose a question for the group, and then try to answer it or explain why you asked it.
• Bring in other research or web resources you’ve found that shed light on a topic we’re discussing.
• Summarize a long discussion thread and try to distill it down to one or a few issues.
• You should include each week at least 2-3 replies to others’ postings—either agreeing or disagreeing or adding something to the points being made. The main thing is that you provide evidence and some logical argument to back up your responses.
• Show more than your opinion—unsupported statements don’t show learning.

Points will be based on the following criteria:

• Your ability to reflect on the questions or the readings/lecture material. To receive ‘A’ range credit, show you’ve not only done the readings, but tried to understand them and used them to explain your ideas. If all readers can see is opinion seemingly uninformed by course material, your points will reflect that. You don’t have to agree with the material in class, but you do need to demonstrate you read it and made a good faith effort to understand it.
• Your grasp of the topic. You don’t necessarily need to show mastery of each reading or topic, but you do need to ask questions where you’re unclear to clarify your understanding and show me you’re putting effort into understanding the material. Again, if you try to do this without referring to the readings or lecture material, I won’t even know if you’ve read it. So ‘I don’t get it’ shows no effort on your part to make any effort to learn.
• Your ability to communicate your ideas. I expect good, organized writing. Complete sentences, spell-checked, and all that. If you’re citing something, do it correctly, give us a web page (and know how to hyperlink). ‘I agree’ is okay, as long as it’s followed by a well-reasoned explanation of why you agree with a previous post (again, using logic, citing evidence).
• Bringing in outside materials. I encourage this, but you should have evaluated these materials. If it’s the first .com site you found on Google, it may be popular but not necessarily credible.
• If you’re writing a long post, use paragraphs to break up points and, to be safe, you might write it in a word document (and save as you go), and then paste it into Canvas—this will help you avoid the frustration of losing a posting you’ve spent considerable time on.

Civility

We discuss, debate and exchange ideas. Civility will prevail. If there are personal attacks—which I don’t expect—I’ll address them privately, and firmly. So show self-restraint, respect for your fellow students—you all have something in common, after all—and tact. Everyone’s here to participate, so avoid postings that discourage others from doing so.

A note on absences: if you’re going to be out of town or away from the Internet for any length of time, let me know.

Again, 160 points on this part of the course—12 pts per week (plus 4 possible pts per week for proofreading your writing, explained below)

Writing in discussion forums

I expect college-level writing or every effort to achieve it. EOU’s Writing Center has a plethora of resources available to all students. There will be four points possible each week for writing in the discussion forums, meaning you need to proofread your posts, check for spelling errors, capitalize, all that basic grammar-related stuff, and make sure that they make sense, to get the full five points each week (there will be a separate grade item for this). A ‘4’ means your posts are in order, make sense, thoughts are well-organized, and you’ve probably done some proofreading before hitting the ‘submit’ button. A ‘3’ means you’ve either not responded to all threads, have shown minimal writing effort, or have some pretty glaring errors. ‘1’ or ‘2’ indicates your posts have so many errors in them that they’re hard to follow, and in any case readers may not take them as seriously. Note: If there are two threads, and you participate in only one, your writing points will be at most 2 out of 4.

Writing is critical to finding work, communicating with prospective employers. We all need self-awareness about our writing. This will show up as a separate grade for each week of the course, but there is nothing you need to submit.

3 points possible per week, 30 points total for the term.

Making up a week’s discussion (you’re entitled to two of these)

Your makeup submissions should be 2-3 pages, double-spaced (11 or 12 pt font) in length. This is how I would like you to organize them (headings are fine):

1. Important points in the source material. What for you were the most important points that you took from the readings, discussion and lecture material for the week? This is an exercise in abstract thinking—what is the ‘big picture?’ What did you learn? You should touch on each reading assignment, maybe note if they seem to be related or connected to each other in some way (even if they offer contradictory viewpoints). I want to see what you got out of the readings and the week’s topic, and gauge your depth of understanding. I’m not looking for book reports here—do some summary, but your paper should be no more than 1/3 summary, and no less than 2/3 analysis.
2. The discussion forum. Demonstrate you read the discussion forum. That is, the posts and replies generated by your student peers. I don’t want a play-by-play blow of people’s postings, I just want you to demonstrate you went through them, and get a sense of what you gleaned from them. How did people respond to the material for the week? What was your take? Just keep in mind—take a stand, but don’t make points you’re not going to support with evidence or logic.

Standards. This is making up for your having missed the discussion boards, so I expect the same amount of intellectual effort to go into the make-up. Good writing, use of complete sentences, paragraphs to change ideas, citing of authors’ works at the end. Demonstrate you’ve been through all of the readings and lecture material. You can submit it to Canvas—there are links to submit (a maximum of) two of these over the course of the term. It will take the same level of effort to get these points as it would had you participated in the discussion.

Weekly ‘share’

This particular discussion thread is different from the regular threads, where we discuss readings and other source material. It is required, not optional. Think of it as a pressure release valve for the course. But also as a chance to sharpen our powers of observation, in this case applying your observations to some aspect of the course subject matter, and in the process creating a bit more of a community of learners.

I grant latitude, as long as it is clear you’ve put some intellectual effort into your participation and stayed true to the nature of the course’s subject matter–a pretty broad target. I would much prefer that your observations have to do with something you’ve noticed–it could be something on a morning commute in the car, bus, train, bicycle, on foot, etc. It could be some interaction in the workplace. Something that popped up in your newsfeed. A conversation you had at dinner. Something interesting you streamed on TV. Etc.

The point is to pay more attention to, be more mindful of, your surroundings, make observations, tie them back to concepts in the course if you can, but perhaps spend a little more time looking outward, a little less time looking at those pocket-size propaganda delivery devices most of us carry around. Unless, of course, you’re considering the carbon footprint of planned or perceived obsolescence as they relate to consumer goods.

So the weekly share is worth up to four points for the week, I would love to see people interacting and carrying on discussion in there, because that way I know that some sharing is actually taking place, being received, and reciprocated. It’s a bit closer to being in a physical classroom.

You will find the weekly share discussion links in the Canvas modules, organized by the week.

40 points possible (10 wks x 4 pts)