Chat and Discussion Board Instructions

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, post at least 1 topic note and 2 replies. For your topic note you could identify something in the reading that you agreed or disagreed with, found interesting, or hard to understand.

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.