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. |
You also may wish to install this video in your class. It covers some very basic tips for students in asynchronous discussions. If it doesn't have quite what you'd like, you can record your own, instead. But viewing this video may give you some idea of what you want to say.
| Widget Connector | ||
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URL: https://youtu.be/yBSPuTuNM30
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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