Study Guide

Discussion

What "Minimum" Means

The requirement is three messages per week. A week is Monday through Sunday, midnight to midnight, MST.

Any sort of message counts, in terms of quantity. Note, however, that quality counts. If all your messages are little more than "gee whiz" posts, your grade will suffer. If you're only at the minimum, this would push your grade down to a D.

The key is participation. You can't post 45 messages in one week and have it count for the semester because at that point you're not participating in discussion, you're just blogging. By the same logic, if you post two messages one week, you can't post four the next to "make up" for the previous week. If you missed, you missed.

Here's some advice that I hope you take. Too many students think of the minimum as a semester goal. If you aim low (for the minimum), you lose flexibility. You can't afford to miss, even one week.

Instead, think of it as a weekly minimum (which is how the requirement is stated). If life is blowing up around you, and you just don't have time for Knox's class this week, what's the minimum you can do? Three messages. But in ordinary weeks, you should be aiming higher.

What Aiming Higher Gets You

What To Do When You're Stuck

Inevitably you will find yourself with nothing to say. Here are some suggestions to help you out.

Ask questions

It's okay to ask what a word means, or to have some phrase or passage explained. You may not have any great insights to make, but people always have questions. You can draw from the primary sources or from the essays or from outside reading. Ask about terms, people, events, explanations, interpretations, claims. Ask about things you always heard were true (or false). If you don't have any questions, you haven't done the reading yet. And don't assume you're the only one who doesn't know. Neither do your fellow students; they just haven't asked yet.

Everyone has covered everything

No they haven't. Chances are, you're not getting online often enough, probably waiting until Saturday or Sunday night. Try posting at the beginning of the week, which means you'll have to be ahead in your reading, not behind.

Take Notes

Read knowing that what you are reading is providing fodder for your posts. Make notes about what you don't understand, what seems striking or unusual, what catches your interest. Use your notes to do some additional research. Then bring that to the discussion board.

Respond

If someone else has asked a question, try to answer it. If they have an idea, comment on it. If they've said something, see if you can add to it.

Discussion Questions

The discussion questions (which I'll eventually have for all my classes) are there strictly as a backup. I much prefer that students drive the discussion rather than having me set the agenda. Nevertheless, if you are stuck and none of the above seems to help, then check the discussion questions. Fair warning: these aren't questions you look up and answer. They're for discussion. You'll have to do some research. So don't leave it for Sunday!