Discussion Board Questions

Discussion Board Instructions:

Overall, your quick task is to create a post 10-15 sentences long that relate to the questions below and reply to TWO classmates at least 10-15 sentences long to EACH classmate.

Detailed Description

Online discussions are a great way for our class to collectively work through listening material, analyzing ideas, and building a critical perspective. When you are creating a discussion post consider the textbook and course material in your post as well as your personal perspective. Working together can help build your understanding of this material, a knowledge that will later help you in preparing for exams. Please be respectful of your classmate’s differing views.

As noted in your syllabus, online discussion-board participation amounts to 30% of your final grade for this class. Early each week, you will find discussion-board questions posted on our class Canvas page. After you have read the relevant material assigned for that week, please post your contribution to your small-group online discussion section. You will need to make at least one post by Wednesday evening (11;59 pm), with at least TWO follow-up posts to reply to at least TWO classmates by Friday evening. Please try to post to classmates who have not yet received a reply in the discussion so all can be involved.

Your posts will be evaluated on quality – comments should be thoughtful, on-topic, substantive, and constructive. Comments must specifically address the readings under consideration for that week – a strong post will make a well-articulated set of points, backed up by pointing to specific evidence from the course material including textbook readings, class conversation and posted songs and videos for the week.

Follow-up posts each week must engage with what others have already posted, advancing the group conversation. Important – your comments must respond by offering something new and meaningful to the discussion, rather than merely echoing what others already said. Comments that merely repeat the same points already made, without adding anything substantially new, will not receive full credit.

Points will not be deducted for a few typographical errors or mistakes in spelling, but you will lose points if your work is very sloppy, especially if it is written so badly that it is hard to read. So do take care to be sure that your writing is clear and coherent.

Again, you do not need to answer all of the above questions, but you must contribute a post that says something meaningful about at least two of them. As a rough guide, your original post and your reply posts should be at least ten to fifteen sentences long – anything shorter is unlikely to analyze deeply enough to be meaningful.

Back up your ideas by pointing to specific ideas or phrases in these primary-source documents and in your other material for this week, but be careful not to plagiarize! You can include a few phrases quoting from your readings, but the bulk of your entry needs to be your own words, and you should put any directly-quoted phrases or sentences in quotation marks, with a citation in parentheses.

Discussion Board Questions:

1. ALL STUDENTS DO THIS QUESTION – Read the Pay-it-forward messages located in Module 1. After reading the advice you have received from your classmates, what are some highlights you discovered about the class and some strategies you might implement to be effective this semester?

Then pick ONE additional question to respond to for your initial post:

2. Have you ever studied listening before in another class or had some kind of listening training? If so, what did you study? What was the goal of the lesson(s)? Was it helpful to you?

3. Do you know someone who could be a better listener? Why do you think they need listening training?

4. View the TED talk/videos or music video for Week 1 and comment on those with your perspective and how they relate to the course content for the week.