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DiscussionForumGuidelines.pdf

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: GUIDELINES AND BEST PRACTICES

How to Approach this Assignment

Your performance on the Discussion Forum assignments represents a significant proportion of your course grade. These interactive, threaded-discussion forums are the primary vehicles through which you can express yourself, interact with class peers, and publicly reflect on the significance of the theories and concepts covered in the course. These assignments provide opportunities within the course for meaningful interaction, informed conversation, and critical discussion between the instructor and students and among students. Through the

Discussion Forums, you can share and reflect on what you are learning and register your reactions to and evaluations of course materials and the content they deliver. Earnest engagement with the questions and issues addressed in these assignments will enhance your overall intellectual commitment as well as foster personal development.

In these essay-style responses, you should express a point of view and support your view with good reasons, evidence, examples, expert opinion, etc. Your goal in these assignments is not just to demonstrate that you have done the reading assignment or that you know how to find and report information related to the topics or questions under discussion. Your most important goal in these assignments is to express your own understanding of the topic and related issues and to share your original thoughts in response to the questions or essay prompts.

Please note: High marks will not be achieved by simply reporting back information from course readings or other sources. Prized here are originality, critical reflection, and peer engagement.

Philosophical thinking and writing involves more than presenting information; beyond doing this, you must also critically assess the issue in question—this involves original thinking and analysis. Moreover, you should attempt to come to some final position in response to the question and include evaluation of others’ positions or views on the issues. Work for originality and development of critical analyses and evaluations. Above all, be clear, concise, and complete in expressing your ideas.

In responding to the Discussion Forum questions, you are encouraged cite specific examples from the course readings (or other sources) to illustrate and support your points. If you copy or paraphrase words or ideas from another author or source, make sure that you follow appropriate procedures for crediting those sources with quotation marks and citations.

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Peer Comments Are Critiques

To actively and fully participate in each week's Discussion Forum assignment, you should work for adding substantive peer comments to the main posts of others in the discussion. Without doing this, you are not really engaging in a discussion or dialogue. A substantive comment should rise to the level of a “critique”: it does more than simply say, "I liked your post!" or "I agree with what you say..." You could start out with that, but say why you liked it or with what in particular you agree and

why, and so on. Here again, as in the main post, the goal is originality and critical thinking.

It is important to note that a critique or critical commentary may be positive, negative, or a mixture of the two. We tend to use the word, “criticize,” or the expression, “being critical” with a mostly negative connotation, as in finding fault with something or “putting something (or someone) down.” That is not the intention here, although part of what you’re doing in writing a critique may indeed be finding fault. But the faults you are pointing out will have nothing to do with the author himself or herself. You will be looking for errors in reasoning and argumentation, in reporting of relevant facts or information, in overlooking or misconstruing important points relevant to the question posed, and so on. In making a positive critical comment, you should explain, as precisely as possible, what it is that the author got right or did well; you might want to describe what you learned from the posted response that is especially meaningful or important or explain how the main post uncovered new ground or settled possible confusions.

For this course, you are required to post at least two peer comments/critiques to two different peers. Ideally, you should critique the main posts of two peers that are answering questions different from the question you answered. This will get you thinking critically about more of the week’s contents than you covered in responding to your assigned question. You are encouraged to comment on more than two main posts—the more you engage others in discussion, the more you learn. If you have done your reading for the week and are engaged with course content, you should have something to say about all of the questions posed in this week’s discussion. Also remember that each peer comment should be between 150-250 words, and any peer comment of fewer than 100 words will receive no credit.

Using Critical Thinking

In the Discussion Forum assignments, you are asked to think critically. Although often confronted with this request (probably in most written assignments in most courses), many students do not really have a clear idea of what, exactly, it means to think critically. To employ critical thinking in addressing an issue is more than just defining a term, describing something, or reporting someone else's words, ideas, or theoretical position.

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Critical thinking and critical discussion go further because they entail two specific activities: analysis and evaluation. And here's where the originality comes in: your own way of seeing things, your own experiences and store of knowledge, as well as your own purposes, all play a role in how you analyze a set of ideas or claims and how you evaluate the position they support. So after you report the relevant information you want to present on the topic at hand, you still have more work to do. You must take apart that information, investigate, interpret, and figure out what is really being said, and think about how that information might mean different things to different people or have implications that go beyond the surface.

The final stage, once the process of analysis is completed, is to judge whether a particular interpretation is correct, to evaluate the quality of someone's reasons for believing a claim, and to decide whether the information reported is worthwhile or tells the whole story. Because this is a philosophy course, critical thinking is, perhaps to a greater extent than in other courses in other subjects, an essential component of what you will be doing as you work through the content and complete the assignments and assessments. For example, in the Discussion Forums and peer comments, you should bring an exchange of ideas to the floor and wrestle with these ideas; it may take time, but if you have thought about and connected with the readings and what others have said and written, this should come naturally.

In this age of "super-information," we have, at a keystroke, volumes upon volumes of information, facts, reports, expert opinions, reference documents, original works, and so on. Hence less and less value is placed upon the ability of students to simply report back information. What should be the goal of students of the 21st century is to add something new and original to the discussion. This means that you have to think things through for yourself and be able to comment

on and critique what others have thought, said, and written. The ability to think critically and to be able to express your ideas clearly, concisely, with precision, and in your own voice is now the gold standard for excellence in student achievement.

Discussion Forums: Specific Instructions

In this course, although there are four discussion-question prompts each week, you will be asked to answer only one of the four with an in-depth essay-style response. Your instructor will assign the questions to ensure that there is an even distribution of answers for each of the four questions. But you should be thinking about how you would respond to ALL FOUR questions because otherwise, you are not really

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addressing all of the week’s learning contents. And even though you are directly responding to only one question, you will be writing critical comments on the others to your peers.

It is a good idea to be thinking about the Discussion Forum questions as you do the reading, so look these questions over ahead of time. As noted above, you should be thinking about the other questions that your peers will be answering as well as the particular question you are addressing. Everyone should be covering all course content, whether it be through posting a response to a specific question, commenting on someone else’s response, or simply reading through and thinking about others’ responses and comments.

A satisfactory response to each Discussion Forum question should be @ 500-750 words. A main discussion response of fewer than 300 words will receive no credit. Your main posts are due by end of day on the due date posted in the course calendar or due-date schedule, and this will be near the end of the week. You then have one or two days to read through all of your peers’ main posts, selecting at least two for your critical comments.

It is important to keep in mind that these Discussion Forums are your primary vehicle for engaging not just with course contents, but with others in the class and with your instructor. This is a critically important assignment for this course, so take your time with it, and put your best foot forward. That means proofreading your work carefully before submitting it; you want your ideas and your arguments to be conveyed with clarity and precision, and grammatical and stylistic errors in writing impede these goals. Although the quality of your writing is not a major component

of your score on this assignment, it still counts! Finally, be sure that you are extremely familiar with all the criteria on the grading rubric for this assignment. The rubric will inform you of exactly what you need to do in this assignment to earn the highest score possible. [The grading rubrics for all assignments are linked close to the assignment descriptions throughout the course and your instructor will also make sure you see these in advance of completing the assignment. Upon receiving your grade on the assignment, you can view the scored rubric in the grade book.]