so the discussion boards are a very
important part of the course it's a way
for you to interact with each other to
help teach yourself and others the
material and to interact with me and
learn things from me get clarifications
from me and and also helped me learn as
well so the discussion boards are
something that I really enjoy and what
I've decided to do this semester is to
make them much more student-led than
they've been in the past in the past
I've largely led the discussion boards
but I've found that I'm not really able
to respond or interact with as many of
the comments on the discussion board as
I would like to optimally so this
semester what I'm doing is having
students essentially act as the leads or
the curators for the discussion I'll
still participate but I want you all to
get the opportunity and the experience
of leading a discussion helping to
answer questions and curating different
directions in a discussion board I think
it's good practice for you and I think
it'll enable me to better interact with
what's going on on the discussion board
by freeing up my time to be able to
really focus on posting responses I have
a full-time job outside of this teaching
engagement and there's also a lot of
work behind the scenes during the
semester to keep the course running and
that all really limits the amount of
time that I can spend actually on the
discussion board so I want to make sure
that you feel you're getting really good
feedback and having a really engage time
in the discussion board and and as such
I don't want that to have to rely on on
me being available to make sure that
that's going on so I'm empowering you
all to really ensure that we have an
active and vigorous discussion this
semester so what the way this is going
to work because of the number of
students we have about 20 students in
the class is that I'm going to divide
everyone up each week into two separate
groups
you'll be randomly assigned to a group
so it'll rotate around and that'll give
you the chance to engage with different
people
it'll make sure that your discussion pod
does not stagnate at any point in the
past I've taught two sections
this class simultaneously and it's been
really interesting to see how each
section operates as a really independent
organism the discussion boards end up
looking very different and by moving you
all around from week to week I think
it'll encourage a variety of different
styles and and and different directions
in the discussion to emerge and you'll
still get to know each other because
you'll probably be together for you know
an average about half of the discussions
since it's random so I'll divide you up
into two groups of ten into two
different discussion boards and in these
two discussion boards that's where
you'll spend most of the week chatting
with your classmates and interacting
with me and each week there will be a
lead for each of the discussion boards
everyone in the class participates in
one of the two discussion boards and
what I'll do is post the name of the
participants in each of these sub boards
on the front page of that board like I
mentioned each board has a lead and that
name will will go out in advance so you
know on a schedule when you're leading
the discussion each week in these boards
should really be related to the material
in the class so the things that are in
the lecture video are the things that
are in the book you can ask questions
about the material if there's something
you don't quite understand if there was
something you found interesting I
encourage you to bring information from
outside of the class into the discussion
can be personal information or perhaps
new scientific findings or things that
are going on outside of the class that
are relevant to that week's topic please
do bring it in it really makes it very
stimulating and and you all will be
grading each other's so the participants
each week will grade the lead of that
week and the lead will grade the
participants each week and over time
your discussion and participation score
will be cumulatively based on these
grades that you receive for these two
roles in the class so each week towards
the end of the week the curators are
leads of each of these weekly discussion
boards so the two people assigned to
lead these discussion boards in a
particular week
at the end of the week they'll sum up
the discussion and their board and then
post it on a third board that'll be
higher level and which everyone in the
entire class can look at so not just the
two subgroups but actually all twenty
students and it's expected that you'll
look at this and it should be
interesting to see the the different
summaries of what the two groups talked
about at that point you can have some
discussion about the summaries or other
topics that you want to bring up in the
the whole class forum and in general you
know most of the discussion should take
place the week in which it's most
relevant but it's fine you know for
things to continue into the the
following week especially you know on
this whole class board where the
summaries make you up some questions for
me or questions from you or other points
you want to add the summary should be
fewer than 500 words and it should be
posted on Tuesday this as the syllabus
says the class resets every Wednesday
and goes goes on to the next week's
material everyone in the class should be
familiar with what's on the whole class
discussion board and like I mentioned
all the students can participate in
comment in addition there may be some
weeks where there will be a topical
discussion a particular topic that I
thought the whole class would find
interesting and the intention is for
everyone to be engaged with that special
topic and to post on it and have
discussions on it not every week will
have this but some weeks will and if
you're interested in the grading process
there's a lot of detail in the syllabus
about this I'm not going to go into it
here except to say that the course
engagement score is is the the total
grade for course engagement is worth
quite a bit of your total grade in the
class and a lot of that grade is
determined through the peer grading
process so the discussion board is
really important
you really should participate as much as
possible and it should not be quantity
of participation it's really the quality
that matters and there are some
parameters in the syllabus to help the
participants grade the
and the leads grade the participants so
I encourage you to look through them I
don't want to go through them in this
video because they're already written
out and I think they're fairly
straightforward but this is how the
discussion boards are gonna work I think
it'll really help you get much more
timely feedback and much more voluminous
feedback it'll help me really focus on
what to respond to and be able to spend
my time interacting with your ideas
instead of sort of keeping track of your
performance on the boards and I think
overall it's a win-win for everyone so
I'm really excited to see how this works
and and and and thank you for doing the
experiment with me if you have any
questions about this please post them in
the discussion board for general
syllabus or general class questions that
you might have thanks