Chat and Discussion Board Instructions

Return to Ethics Online - Summer 1 2013

For your online course, you will be asked to engage in an online discussion board and join a small chat group.

Discussion Board Involvement

For each week of the course (based on a Friday to Friday week), post at least 1 topic note and 2 replies to the Google Discussion Board for your class. For your topic note you could identify something in the reading that you agreed or disagreed with, found interesting, or hard to understand.

Points are given for knowledge of content, but also for raising interesting questions and for being a helpful and supportive student colleague. I'll make the scoring available to you each weekend by Sunday.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/alfinoethics

Rubric and Scoring of Discussion Board (DB)

Normally, if you post three significant posts (one substantive and two replies to others), you will receive the full 5 points of credit for this assignment. I will make some posts, but I won't routinely produce feedback for you unless you fail to post or if your posts could be more substantive to count for the assignment.

You will count an average of your best 5 scores on discussion board for your total points for this assignment. We will map that point distribution onto the grading system. I expect a 4.5 to be about an A-, but it could start lower. We need to see the distribution.

Chat Session Transcripts

Based on your availability data, you will be assigned a small group to schedule chat sessions. You should schedule 2 chat sessions per week of class. Two members of the chat session will copy and send a transcript to me of the session which I will review.

The goal of the chat sessions to eventually to model philosophical discussion, but in the early sessions, you should stick to answering study questions. After introducing yourselves, you might start a discussion on a question and agree about some of the elements of a good answer. At some point, your group should agree to take several minutes to write up answers. Sharing and comparing answers to study questions is a good initial or "default" activity for a chat session.

After a few chat sessions, you might find that a question or issue gives rise to a discussion or someone may want to introduce a topic or make a criticism of a reading or argument. Try to take on the discussion as a group and demonstrate philosophical methods and goals. If things break down, you can also go back to study questions.

The main two things you should want to do in each chat session are: be a helpful contributer to answers to study questions or any discussion going on and make sure you facilitate the involvement of everyone in your chat group. I will try to drop in on chats in progress.

Rubric and Scoring for Chat Sessions

I will review your participation in a chat session through the chat session transcript according to the following rubric:

1 point for being in the session from start to end and participating regularly. 1-2 points for a pattern of helpful participation that kept the group moving forward. 1-2 points for clarity in expression, accuracy of information, use of argumentation.

I will provide an audio file with feedback on the chat session, which I will email directly to the chat participants. You will see your points from that session in the notes field in your grading scheme ("My Work" in the course website).

As with the DB scoring, we'll have to see how the distribution goes, but my expectation would be that a 4.5 is about an A-.