Part of your participation and engagement in the course content will come through discussion forums. There will be two discussion forums in this class, each with one thread. They designed for you to post your progress on the assignments, and to discuss any issues related to completing them. The first forum (thread) will cover material related to the Summary/analysis of readings, how you’re getting through those and what issues or questions you might have in the process. This discussion forum will be open on Jan 4, and will close on (Sunday) January 31–the day before the paper is due.

The second discussion thread focuses on the final paper–a reflection and journal on smart phone technologies and your use of them, and will open on February 2, closing on March 4.

The discussions will be evaluated based on your thoughtful reflection and responses to the prompts. Because it is discussion, you also need to reply to others’ prompts. I’m not looking for rote or robotic responses, but genuine interaction and discussion. Much of this material will be new to most of you, and some of it might be distressing–sort of like realizing that the diet you’ve been on since childhood contained trace amounts of mercury. No the news isn’t poisoning your brain, but you likely haven’t been encouraged to put much thought into how much ‘processing’ of the news occurs before it reaches our sense. If I can’t tell whether you’ve even read the material, and most of the content is opinion uninformed by the course’s source material, you won’t receive many of these 50 points. Gratuitous posts (‘ditto!’) keep us going, I like to see people encourage each other, but they’re more a public service and act of kindness and collegiality than a source of points. If you’re aiming for an ‘A’:

1. At least one substantial posting in each discussion thread I begin. You won’t be able to do that in a couple of sentences. A couple of thoughtful paragraphs, maybe. But keep in mind that all I will have to go on to assess your effort in these forums is the level and quality of your participation.
2. At least two substantive responses within each discussion thread to a post from someone else in class. By substantive I mean that you need to show me that you’ve been following the thread, gone through the source material (readings, any videos …) and have something thoughtful to say. Posts need to demonstrate you have done the readings and read the lecture material. This is a discussion forum, not a posting board.  Treat it as such and you will get more points, and more learning out of the class.
3. Thoughtful postings. This covers the quality of your postings. I’m looking for some evidence of thought on your part. This is worth 5 points per week. Opinion is fine, as long as you demonstrate how it is informed by the assigned material for the week.

Here’s some guidance:

1. Do not wait to post until the end of the window for each discussion forum. This is part of the value of the online medium—everybody contributes, nobody gets to hide in the back of the class, everyone has a chance to shine. But if you’re waiting until the bitter end, there is no discussion, it’s simply a posting board. And I’ve already noted above that this is a chance to interact with your peers, to do what we normally do in the classroom (and the conversations can be pretty lively).
2. Model civility. No flaming, no personal attacks—we’re discussing ideas in this course, and mutual respect is a prerequisite. We certainly don’t have to agree—but we can disagree in a civil way, and use persuasion, logic and evidence to support our own ideas (too bad cable news doesn’t do more of this …). This is especially important in terms of your own professional growth—learning how to disagree with tact and grace. This is where we discuss, debate and exchange ideas. We’re here to encourage everyone to participate, but your participation shouldn’t discourage others from doing so.
3. If you’re writing a long post, use paragraphs to break up points and (warning!), 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 angst of losing a post you’ve spent considerable time composing.

Postings that can gain you credit:

• You can pose a question for the group, then try to answer it or explain why you asked it.
• You can provide other research or web resources you’ve found that shed light on a subject we’ve discussing.
• You can summarize a long discussion thread and try to distill it down to one or a few issues.
• You can reply to others’ postings—either agreeing or disagreeing, the main thing is that you provide evidence and some logical argument to back up what you’re saying.
• The key is, show me more than your ungrounded opinion—simply expressing what you think without reference to the reading material isn’t learning, or at least not the kind that will merit a passing grade.

Points will be based on the following criteria:

• Your reflection on the questions or the readings/lecture material. To receive full credit, you need to show you’ve not only been through the readings, but understood them and used them as evidence to support your views. I can’t emphasize this point enough. Some degree of chatter about a topic is fine, but not at the expense of what you need to do in the discussion boards.
• Your grasp of the topic. You don’t necessarily need to show mastery of each reading or topic. After all, you’re here to learn. But you do need to show effort, and 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’ doesn’t work. You can expand and discuss what you do get, for starters.
• Your ability to communicate your ideas. I expect clear, organized writing. Sentences, parts of speech, spell-checked, and all that. If you’re citing something, do it correctly, give us a web page. ‘I agree’ is okay, as long as it’s followed by a well-reasoned explanation of why you agree with a previous post (again, citing evidence). No textspeak.
• Bringing in outside materials or research. I encourage this, but I also want you to have evaluated these materials. If it’s the first .com site you found on Google, I’ll let you know if I think it’s a suspect source.

Each forum is worth 25 points, 50 total. For each forum:

• 5 points possible for proofreading your writing in the forum (grammar, spelling, coherence …).
• 15 points possible for following the guidelines above, making thoughtful contributions to the class.
• 5 points are subjective–I’m looking for evidence of intellectual effort here. That doesn’t mean graduate-level writing, it means demonstrating that you have read the material, tried to understand and apply it, and supported your points with evidence.

Required source material for completing the discussion forums