Here you will find various resources developed by COLI that can be installed in various courses. Feel free to use them, in whole or modified, in your course.
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* Adjust post length in your instructions to your course plan.
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Instructions for Productive Communication
Beyond community standards, you may wish to have a set of instructions that stipulate what constitutes productive contributions in your course discussions. Here is a sample set of guidelines you may adopt or adapt:
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Remember, D2L has a rubric engine (see the Self-Paced Training Set) which makes it easy to grade with a push-button rubric, once you've entered the rubric criteria and levels into D2L's rubric's tool. Here's a basic example of a rubric from a history course. For your own class, you will likely make more specific descriptions relevant to the course subject, content, and procedures.
| Criteria | Excellent | Adequate | Insufficient |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relevance | Highly relevant to the discussion topic. Addresses directly and completely the discussion question | Relevant, or toward the point of the discussion, but not an adequate attempt to answer the discussion question. | Incidental to the point and question of the discussion. More a distraction than a contribution. |
| Depth and Detail | Answer provides detailed analysis, drawing on relevant sources (either those assigned or other sources of sufficient quality and relevance). | Decent answer, but somewhat generalized and not drawing sufficient details from relevant sources. | Answer essentially opinion, as it builds from no relevant sources on topic. |
| Organization and Writing | A coherent case is made, with a stated main idea, and tightly written, clear sentences backing up the main point. | Point is clear, but writing needs better organization, Unclear why some content or statements are included. | Post is poorly written. Disorganized collection of statements. |
| Spelling and Grammar | Proper grammar, sentence construction, spelling, and punctuation employed. | Requires greaterattention to sentence construction, grammar, spelling, or punctuation. | Post legibility or credibility undermined by poor sentence construction, spelling, punctuation, or grammar. |
One last tip: Create a sample post so students can see what a quality contribution, in accordance with your expectations, will look like.
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A Learning Contract can help inspire students by politely reminding them why they are taking the course, and what they will get out of it. This can be built using a quiz engine, such as in D2L (like this one) or perhaps a Google Form survey. Obviously there is no guarantee that this will improve every student's level of effort, but when students encounter it in your class, many will get the sense that this course is an investment, and that the professor is sincerely interested in their academic success.
Start with some preliminary instructions, that explain how they should complete the contract. For example:
| By checking the boxes and clicking "save," you indicate that you have read and understand this course's requirements for students. |
Then, you can use multiple choice questions that allow multiple (all) answer options to be chosen. (In D2L, these are called multi-select questions.) These can include, for example, questions that begin:
I understand that in this course I will be learning about web-based pedagogy. I agree to work toward and attempt to achieve the following learning goals: | Here's an example: Within this course, I agree to do the following:
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| Within this course, I agree to do the following: | |
| After this course is over, I will strive to: |
Lastly, create a short-answer text question where students can "sign" the contract:
| To sign, type in your name. |
Tip: Learning Contracts work best if also accompanied by a professor's pledge, in the syllabus or elsewhere, to teach according to the best principles, ethics, and methods of their discipline, and the learning goals and objectives outlined in the syllabus.