Discussion Boards and Activities
Discussion boards and short activities constitute 10% of your overall grade in the class. We will not participate in a discussion board each week (for an overview of which weeks contain discussion board activities, please see the class schedule). If you are unfamiliar with how to use the discussion boards in Blackboard 9.1, please view this tutorial before beginning the class.
Activities will be graded according to their assigned criteria. Those can be located in the "Think About It" section of each assignment.
Discussion boards will be graded according to the following criteria (which align with the course outcomes):
Audience Awareness
Discussion board posts will engage classmates in extended discussion of the prompt indicated in the assignment. In other words, discussions should not be a single post with no replies (just as a face-to-face discussion would not consist of you saying something to someone and then walking away without hearing or responding to their reply). Discussion board posts should communicate ethically by considering the content of classmates' responses and replying in a polite, well-edited manner that is relevant to the discussion at hand. Consider discussion board posts places to practice the formal, technical conversations that you will have with colleagues and with your supervisors in your everyday workplace.
Collaboration
Discussion board posts should respond thoroughly to the thoughts of others beyond the "Good job!" or "I like this!" post (i.e., "cheerleading.") Be thoughtful in your responses, adding additional examples, suggestions, recommendations, and content in each post. For those posts that occur during brainstorming for projects, be sure to engage in classmates' ideas in order to substantially help them with their projects. In other words, go beyond "this is my experience with your topic" and into "here are some other sources or angles you might consider for this project."
Information Literacy
Discussion boards should center around substance. In other words, when at all possible, research what you are discussing and provide outside information that will benefit your classmates in addition to your own thoughts, experiences and opinions on an issue. Hyperlink any external sources into the content of your discussion posts (see this video on how to hyperlink an item in a Blackboard Discussion Forum).
Digital Literacy
Discussion boards will allow you to subscribe to the threads that you post. Subscribing to discussion board threads you post will allow you to receive UALR Gmail alerts any time someone has responded to your initial discussion board post. You should respond to those in discussion board who respond to you in a timely manner (just as you would respond to others who respond to you in regular conversation). Discussion boards will be evaluated according to the depth in which you engage in a few discussions, not the overall number of posts you provide (see the Week One Introductory video for a demonstration of how to subscribe to a thread in Blackboard).
Activities will be graded according to their assigned criteria. Those can be located in the "Think About It" section of each assignment.
Discussion boards will be graded according to the following criteria (which align with the course outcomes):
Audience Awareness
Discussion board posts will engage classmates in extended discussion of the prompt indicated in the assignment. In other words, discussions should not be a single post with no replies (just as a face-to-face discussion would not consist of you saying something to someone and then walking away without hearing or responding to their reply). Discussion board posts should communicate ethically by considering the content of classmates' responses and replying in a polite, well-edited manner that is relevant to the discussion at hand. Consider discussion board posts places to practice the formal, technical conversations that you will have with colleagues and with your supervisors in your everyday workplace.
Collaboration
Discussion board posts should respond thoroughly to the thoughts of others beyond the "Good job!" or "I like this!" post (i.e., "cheerleading.") Be thoughtful in your responses, adding additional examples, suggestions, recommendations, and content in each post. For those posts that occur during brainstorming for projects, be sure to engage in classmates' ideas in order to substantially help them with their projects. In other words, go beyond "this is my experience with your topic" and into "here are some other sources or angles you might consider for this project."
Information Literacy
Discussion boards should center around substance. In other words, when at all possible, research what you are discussing and provide outside information that will benefit your classmates in addition to your own thoughts, experiences and opinions on an issue. Hyperlink any external sources into the content of your discussion posts (see this video on how to hyperlink an item in a Blackboard Discussion Forum).
Digital Literacy
Discussion boards will allow you to subscribe to the threads that you post. Subscribing to discussion board threads you post will allow you to receive UALR Gmail alerts any time someone has responded to your initial discussion board post. You should respond to those in discussion board who respond to you in a timely manner (just as you would respond to others who respond to you in regular conversation). Discussion boards will be evaluated according to the depth in which you engage in a few discussions, not the overall number of posts you provide (see the Week One Introductory video for a demonstration of how to subscribe to a thread in Blackboard).