Summary

Your posts in these forums offer you a low-stakes chance to practice skills and try out ideas related to the major assignments for this course. (For more info, see “Practice Assignments” in the syllabus.) Your posts are rated on a scale from 1 to 5, and we grade them as follows:

4 to 5

Expected level

3

Moving toward expected level

1 to 2

Please seek support from your instructor, TA, or the Centre for Academic Communication .

Content Comprehension (Understanding of the content being discussed)

The student understands the assignment (or asks questions in order to understand the assignment).

Information and knowledge presented in the post are accurate.

The student includes accurate explanations, reasons, and/or evidence as per assignment expectations.

The ideas are reasonably clear and the student shows some understanding of expectations but probably needed to ask for further clarification.

The contributions show some attempt at completing the assignment. The explanations are somewhat accurate. Ideas are correct but might not be concise.

The student is struggling to understand the assignment expectations.

The student has difficulty explaining themselves.

The ideas are inaccurate and/or unnecessarily difficult to comprehend.

Reasoning (Ability

to follow guidelines and make informed decisions)

The student has a clear idea of the assignment expectations and applies their knowledge in a thoughtful manner. For example, the student might offer ask thoughtful responses or raise a helpful question when more explanation is needed.

The organization of the post makes it easy to follow the student’s ideas.

The student is able to critically assess the topic and is able to distinguish fact from opinion.

The student supports assertions with evidence.

The student seems to rely too much on what others have done (but does not plagiarize). For example, their work may include repetitive questions or comments.

The student may overuse opinion or not have a clear idea of when to support an assertion or claim.

The organization is uneven or slightly confused.

Opinions may be stated as facts.

The organization is lacking – the reader finds it hard to understand which idea is important.

The student’s post jumps randomly between topics.

Interaction with others

The student initiates dialogue thoughtfully.

Interactions are appropriate and supportive.

Criticism is offered constructively.

The student encourages a variety of points of view.

The student interacts rarely if at all.

There is no interaction at all.

If there is interaction, it’s not related to the topic.

The student attacks or is dismissive of ideas posted by others.

Written expression or language conventions

The student uses language that others in the group/discussion will understand.

The student employs well-chosen vocabulary. The word order/sentence structure facilitates reading.

The student defines or clearly explains terms and concepts that might be unfamiliar to others; the student knows when such explanations are necessary.

The vocabulary and sentence structures are not equally understandable to other members in the discussion or they make the post somewhat difficult to understand.

The post is wordy. There are simply too many extraneous words, which makes the post difficult to read.

The student uses language that others in the group are unlikely to understand.

The ideas are difficult to follow.

The language choices are vague, or unnecessary jargon may be used.

Mechanics

There are few, if any, errors in written expression (e.g. commas are where they are supposed to be; each sentence has a capital and a period and so on).

There are misspellings and grammatical errors that impede reading comprehension.

The frequency of misspellings and grammatical errors makes the post difficult to understand.