Online Discussion
We are using the Yellowdig community platform for this course. Participation is required and generates your “Participation” grade, which is 10% of your final course grade. (In-class participation will be considered as well in borderline grade cases.)
You can to get started with a self-introduction to the class.
Yellowdig looks and feels more like a social media platform than an instructor-led class discussion. I will give only occasional prompts. Most of the time, you will decide what topics are of interest and post accordingly. You can also post questions, which anyone in the group (including me) can address. Yellowdig lets you find and share content (articles, videos, etc.) that you feel is relevant to lectures and readings. The important thing is that you are posting and having useful conversations about course-relevant topics.
As you create Posts and make Comments that contribute to the community, and as other students react to or or comment on your posts, you will automatically receive participation points. The points you earn in Yellowdig accumulate to a total goal for the course. To learn more about how points work and how many you can still earn, click on the grade indicator at the top-left of the Community feed. Each week you can earn up to 100 points of the 1,500 required by the end of the course. You can also go up to 25% over to earn up to 25 extra points per week as a “buffer” against weeks in the semester when life gets in the way and you don’t earn the full 100 points. Regular participation is ideal but I wanted to give you some flexibility.
At midnight on Fridays, the weekly points reset and you will be able to start earning points for the coming week. At this time your grade will also recalculate and likely go down. That's because your grade is now accounting for points you'll need to earn in the current week to get your grade back to 100%. You'll again have until the following Friday to get up to the weekly max. If you are having a good discussion you can always keep posting even after you have reached the weekly max; you just will stop earning additional credit toward your grade until the next weekly period begins. (Our first grading period will be longer to allow everyone to get up to speed on the course and on Yellowdig: the first points turnover will be at the end of the second week of classes.)
A real discussion requires that others are listening (reading) and responding. Note that you will earn quite a few points when other people react to your Posts and Comments. Your Posts will also get more points if they get a good conversation started (i.e. if people comment on them). So think about your audience when you are posting (i.e. your fellow classmates). Also, be sure to recognize good posts by reacting to them and talking about them.
It is also helpful to realize that you can’t get points from people interacting with your posts if you don’t have posts up for other students to see. Therefore, coming in earlier and getting good conversations started can actually save you effort. I will also occasionally give Accolades to Posts that are exceptionally good or thoughtful. You’ll increase your odds of your posts receiving that recognition if you have them up early and I can see you are contributing to a vibrant discussion. Our Community will thrive when we treat each other with respect and sensitivity. We will be adopting Yellowdig's code of conduct for this course. To start off feel free to use the "Introduce Yourself" Topic and share a bit about who you are and what you are hoping to get out of taking this class. Feel free to share pictures, videos, or interesting links about you and what you do. In subsequent weeks please discuss anything relevant to the course and things you think others in the community will benefit from talking about. A few pointers and recommendations: Review the student section of the Yellowdig knowledge base. Take advantage of features like #hashtags and @mentions to bring the discussion to life! Use the Help section (in the menu under your avatar) for tips and info on different features.