Discussion Board Instructions 1. Administrating Group: Choose a topic early before the week of your DB.

Find a reputable source to support, interject, or inspire your prompt. Write the prompt and submit to the instructor by Thursday evening the day before your board goes live. Administer (read daily, respond, ask questions, etc.) the board during the week it is live. 2. Participants: Read the other responses that came before you and post a thoughtful response to the prompt. Check the board at least once more during the week to see if someone has asked you a question about your post or if you have more to add. Discussion Boards begin Friday at 5 pm and end the following Friday at 11 am. Discussion Board Guidelines The discussion board is a vital component of developing thinking and writing skills outside the classroom. Read the following guidelines and refer back to them during the semester. 1. You must post 1000 words as part of well-thought out and presented comments in order to meet the Gordon Rule requirement. You will likely write more than that. While a minimum length for each post is not given, you are expected to offer a thoughtful contribution to the conversation and to post more than once in each discussion. You may have a few very short posts such as "I agree" or "that sounds interesting", but overusing them will affect your grade. 2. Spelling, grammar, mechanics, and other conventions are as important on the discussion board as they are in a written document, but only blatant and consisent disregard for convention will affect your grade. Readability and clarity are the goal. The discussion boards are written an audience of your peers (students in a higher education setting looking to analyze a topic). Please keep these suggestions in mind as rules of thumb.

Avoid slang except where needed because of the subject matter. No abbreviations or text speak. No ellipses ... between words. Use complete sentences. Read the prior posts before posting to avoid redundant or repeated information.

3. Correct placement of posts: Under the Forum "ENC 1101: 0371, Summer A/C 2013 Forum", there are topics such as "Course FAQs" or "Week 1 DB". Students cannot add forums or topics, but within topics, they can start conversations. Choose your "title" carefully. You want to be clear in the "title" what the topic (and maybe direction) of your post is. When you want to reply, you can do so to a specific post or to the original post. For example, let's say you go to the "Course FAQs" topic and read the discussion entitled "Discussion Board Instructions". If you want to respond to what I have written here, you will click on "Reply to Initial Message" at the top. If someone else has posted a reply titled "Question about spelling and grammar" and you have an answer to their question or you want to add to their question, you will

go to that specific post and choose "Reply to This Message". Doing this correctly will create a "tree" of messages (think of how a family tree traces back different branches of a family), also called "threads", and keep conversations on similar topics together. See this example:

4. The online environment is still a college classroom, which means what is not acceptable in a physical classroom is still not acceptable in the virtual classroom. 5. There is a human behind every post--be cognizant of what you are posting and the effect it may have on your readers. 6. I will read everything and be part of the discussion, but I may not respond to all of the posts. Grading Guidelines: The discussion board can be a very rich experience. You will find that you have time to think about comments you want to make and even revise them before they are posted. As such, it will be graded just like any other assignment in the class. A rubric will be posted to guide your work. To receive credit for your participation, follow these steps:

Save each of your postings with the date in a separate Word document For part of the reflective analysis, write a brief reflection of your online discussion board participation and experience. Below are listed several very general topic choices. Your group will choose a topic (then will be removed for subsequent groups) and create a thoughtful and evocative prompt to

begin the conversation. Throughout the week, group members will play an administrative role, checking every day to respond, ask questions, or provoke further discussion. After the due/date time is reached, the group will write a summary of the conversation. Students may continue to post and discuss on the board throughout the semester. If you think of any topics that should be added to the list, please let me know. TOPICS:

cats and the Internet memes (or a particular meme) life unplugged kids and the digitally connected life changes journalism and dissemination of news and information ease of life difficulty to life the digital life and transportation safety/security social media specific digital tools (twitter, instagram, pinterest, etc.) pirating ownership/licensing identity - avatars, different accounts? digital legacies access gender age food