• Don't add students until a few days before school starts. When you add, the students get the Welcome message, and you want that message to occur as close to the beginning of class as possible.

• Make your own welcome message. Either learn to modify the generic Welcome message, or simply have your own ready to go that you send as a normal message to the list.
  • Send it as soon as a student is confirmed as added to the list
  • Introduce yourself and the course
  • Perhaps reference a Web page for more details
• Have everyone post an introduction
  • Name
  • Major
  • Where they live (just the town!)
  • Other classes they are taking
    
• Post every day for the first few days
  • Establish a conversational tone
  • Send only one or two messages each day

Notebook = Yes, Weekly, Private

This enables log files weekly and makes it so that no one else can retrieve them

Confidential = Yes

Do not let this list appear in the general list of all lists

Subscription = By Owner

This makes the list closed; only the owner of the list (the instructor, typically) can add or remove members

Review = Private

List members can see the settings for the list, but only the list owner can see the list of names and e-mail addresses of everyone who is on the list

• Add a student

ADD listname studentaddress firstname lastname

e.g., ADD HY101 ELKNOX@BSU.IDBSU.EDU Skip Knox

Note that you must have a first name and a last name, and that you cannot have a middle initial or anything other than two names. Case matters for the name.

• Remove a student

DELETE listname studentaddress

e.g., DELETE HY101 ELKNOX@BSU.IDBSU.EDU

• See who is currently on the list

REVIEW listname

• Download a discussion log

GET listname LOGxxxx

• Get a report on number of messages posted

GET STATS

• Learn about more listserv commands

GET HELP

Nota bene: these commands are for Lsoft's listserv software. The other popular list server software is Majordomo. The command syntax may differ somewhat, although the command logic is the same for both products.

• Make one or more Web pages with discussion questions. I have discussion questions to go with each study unit.

• Use discussion questions, not discussion topics. If you phrase it in the form of a question, the students are more likely to respond to it.
• You can take a single topic and break it into several questions.
• Try phrasing questions that contradict each other, or that seem to invite a "wrong" answer. Anything, in short, that will get the students stirred up a bit.

• If your course has recurring themes, use discussion questions to draw attention to these

• Discussion questions can be optional, required, or a combination of both. In my class, discussion is required, but answering the discussion questions is optional. They are there merely as a fall-back when students run out of things to say (which they will, from time to time).

• Students expect privacy; they won't even think to ask about it. That is, it won't occur to them that their conversations might be seen by anyone outside the class.
• Privacy does not mean you guarantee no one will see their messages, but only that you won't knowingly advertise them to the world.

• Make yours a closed list

• Delete the log files, if it's not done automatically at the end of the semester

• Ask your system administrator to hide the log files from Internet spiders; that is, make sure the log files can't be seen by AltaVista and other search engines.
  • You can test this by going to AltaVista and doing a search on a student's e-mail address (in quotes). If you turn up any hits that are from your class discussion, then your log files are not hidden.
• If you post samples of your discussions, strip out names and e-mail addresses. I write a macro to do this for me because it is a tedious chore.

• If you quote your students in a publication, get their permission.
  
  

• Grade each student each week, for the first few weeks

• Later in the semester, evaluate only occasionally

• Send progress reports at three and six weeks (mail a copy to yourself!)

• A student consistently below the minimum required messages per week gets a D

• Trivial messages don't really count and get a D

• Substantial messages earn an A or B

• Messages that fall between trivial and substantial earn a C

• F is reserved for those who don't even try

• The larger the class, the more important it is to be methodical

This taxonomy can be used as a rough guide for grading. Use it as a starting point for your own and modify it as you see fit.

Trivial

• Mere Question: a question that asks only on a point of fact, or asks something that I know is in the textbook or in lecture.
• Simple Comment: parroting what's in the book or lecture, "I agree" comments that add nothing, or a comment that there's this really neat reference on the Net.
• Ahistorical Reply: someone answers a question, but the reply contains only speculation and deduction, and does not reference any sources.
• Gee Whiz: expression of amazement or surprise (e.g., "Boy, that Emperor Caligula was sure crazy!"; or, "I had no idea so many people died during the Black Death!").
• Off-Topic: messages that the Web site appears to be down, that there is some history-related show on TV, etc.

Substantial

• Real Question: one that shows that the student has read the material but still is unsure about something
• Real Answer: an answer that uses historical evidence.
• Real Comment: an observation or line of reasoning that uses material from lecture, text or other historical source.

• Mail problems
  • Your server goes down
  • Have another way to communicate with the class
  • For example, know at least one student's telephone number; if you can't send messages, call the student and have that person post a notice to the list
• A student's server goes down
  • In effect, this student can't get to class. Handle the same way you would for a live class
  • If the problem persists, then you may need to make grading adjustments
• Lost messages
  • If it's trivial, I just let it go
  • If it's important, GET the log file and find the lost message(s)
• Mail refuses to work
  • This is usually on the student end and usually involves someone new to mail or working with a new ISP
  • If the problem persists and occurs early in the semester, the student may need to withdraw
  • Work with your administration; you may need to have a special designation-dropped due to technical difficulties.
• Attachments
  • This is a chronic problem. Ideally, you should get a mail program that supports all the major encoding types
  • MIME, Binhex, uuencode
  • Know which types your mailer supports
  • At worst, they can paste the document into a mail message and send it that way (works only for text, of course)
• Tech support
  • You are not tech support; remember, if a student's car breaks down, the instructor is not obliged to provide auto repair. E-mail, etc. is the electronic parallel to commuting.
  • Ideally, your school will have one or more people specifically designated to support on-line courses; otherwise, refer them to the general university help and/or to the local ISP help line
  • Make friends with someone at tech support. You don't want someone who will fix all your problems-you'll never get that-but you want someone who will at least let you know what is going on with the system and what that might mean for your class. You will want to know whether the problem you are experiencing is chronic or transient, system-wide or local, and so on.

• Move messages into separate folders
  • Study units-e.g., Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, for my Western Civ course
  • Administrivia-this is where all messages go that have to do with computer problems, questions about course mechanics, etc.
  • Assignments-exams, copies of graded exams, and any other formal assignments
  • Off-topic-everything else. I keep pretty much everything, at least until the course is over. Once it has ended, this folder can be deleted.
• Back up your mail files!

• Remember that messages direct to you (or from you) are not in the list log files; if you lose one, it's gone forever.

• After the semester ends, archive everything to tape or diskette

• Download and archive the log files, then tell the list administrator to delete the log files on the server
  

• If attachments are possible
  • Use colors to set off your comments
  • I use blue for content comments and red for proofreading comments
  • I embed all comments directly in the text
  • Write macros to handle common comments
    
• If attachments are not possible
  • I use dashed lines above and below my comments to set them off
  • This is clumsy, but it works
    
    

• Students who are shy in live classes often blossom in a virtual class, but others who talk readily in a live class fall silent in the virtual class.

• Some are unnerved by seeing their words in print. What they see seems somehow more permanent, demanding a more formal discourse, and not everyone is confident in their ability to carry on such discourse.

• Everyone else is saying clever things. Some are intimidated when they see that others in the class seem to know the material far better than they do. They become afraid to speak up lest they reveal how little they understand.

• Someone else said what I was going to say.

• Not accustomed to public debate. Some people don't take well to a controversial style of conversation. They are accustomed either to finding the authority and deferring to him/her, or else they are accustomed to being the authority. This sort of person takes disagreement as a challenge and will instinctively clam up.

• Put off by how authoritative someone else seems to be.

• Let the students know how class will end. I post a message telling them on what day I will take down the list; I tell them that they will receive a notice that they've been removed, that that will be their final communication, and that afterward they will not be able to send to the list. I remind them they can still send e-mail to one another directly or to me directly.

• Remind the students to do the course evaluations

• Leave the list up through finals week, plus a few days. I do this because it costs me nothing and it gives everyone a chance to wrap up conversations.

• Delete all members (except yourself)

• The list itself should remain. This is optional, but my system administrator appreciates not having to re-create the list every semester!

• Download all the logs, then have list administrator delete the logs
• Enjoy the holiday!
  
  
  

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