These instructions were developed by Dr. Nancy Short and have been successfully used at the Duke University School of Nursing.
Discussion Board Guidelines (XX% of total grade):
There will be ### online discussions during the semester. You can achieve an individual participation score of up to 25 points per discussion board. The instructor will start the discussion board thread and you will have one week to participate. Forums start and end on (day of week) at (time) DST. In general, you should strive to contribute intellectual insights to the discussion rather than discrete, unrelated comments. The purpose for setting criteria for comments within discussions is to help you see clearly the role of comments for learning in a virtual course. If you aspire to “Collaborative Level” in this course, you will be well accustomed to the role by the end of the semester. As you can see, you may achieve a perfect score of 25 by posting 2 collaborative comment + 1 generative comment, 5 generative comments, 1 collaborative comment + 3 generative comments, etc. See examples of each level of comment at the end of the syllabus. You may be tempted to simply divide up your comments to achieve a larger number of postings. I reserve the right to “call you” on this behavior and to adjust the scoring accordingly. If you consistently post during the final 12 hours of the discussion week, you may receive a deduction of 5 points: it is impossible for a group to hold a meaningful discussion without group members present.
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Value of individual postings
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Characterization of Individual Postings
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0 points
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No post, late post after deadline, simple agreement, thanks etc
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2 points
Simple posting
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No evidence of interaction with other participants’ postings
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5 points
Generative
comment
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The response builds on the ideas of other participants and digs deeper into assignment questions or issues. New material (beyond readings) may be introduced by the participant.
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10 points Collaborative level posting
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The response integrates multiple views and/or shows value as a seed for reflection by other participants’ responses in its thread. Alternatively, the response contributes language, a metaphor or a study tool that serves to deepen the dialogue. Such threads moderate the discussion for all.
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