Introduction

Overview

Lesson Plans

Reading Selection Recommendations

Assignments

Curbing Plagiarism

Additional Teaching & Course Design Resources

Guide Contributors


Authors & Contributors

Response Discussion Forum Assignment Examples

A final variation of the response paper is the online forum. RamCT and the Writing Studio (as do various blog sites such as http://wordpress.com/or www.blogger.com/start) provide the option of allowing students to comment and respond to each others' writing. This strategy creates a virtual classroom discussion and gives students who are not comfortable talking in class an opportunity to voice their opinion in a less threatening atmosphere. Some students also prefer to formulate and structure their thoughts in a writing format before releasing them for public consumption. The following assignments use this forum option instead o the more traditional response papers.

Fifteen percent of your course grade will be determined by weekly postings to our Writing Studio class Forum.  In order to receive full credit for this portion of the class, you will complete Fourteen forum postings (one for each week of the semester except the first). Also, each week you should complete 2 responses to other students’ postings.  The following guidelines apply:

Post a thoughtful, competently written, approximately one-page (about 250 words) response to one of the week’s prompts by 11:00 am on the appropriate day of class.  This means that for a prompt posted on Monday (dealing with Wednesday’s reading), you will need to post your response by 11:00 am on Wednesday and so forth and so on.  The posts will be directly linked to certain class discussions, so completing them after the fact defeats the purpose and will result in no credit.  A forum question will be posted one class before it is due.  There will be at least 2 choices of questions to answer per week.  This will make more sense as you start doing it.

You will also read and post brief responses to at least two of your classmates' postings every week.  Please respond to current postings rather than those from previous weeks and, as always, make sure that your responses are as thoughtful and considerate as any you would wish to receive.  No credit will be given for postings that are disrespectful, inattentive, or otherwise inappropriate.

Forum Postings will be graded on completion. It approximately breaks down as five points per posting and one point per response. Postings that are poorly written, insubstantial, or inappropriate will earn no credit. 

Here is another example:

Forum Postings:

Fifteen percent of your course grade will be determined by weekly postings to our Writing Studio class Forum.  In order to receive full credit for this portion of the class, you will complete FIFTEEN Forum Postings.  The following guidelines apply: