What Constitutes A Threaded Discussion?

Discussion Folders. The instructor will set up several discussion folders in which we will complete "in class" activities through conducting "threaded discussions" and related investigations of Internet sites. These will start the 5th week of the course and continue through week 12 of the course. Each discussion folder usually will span a week period and have a name that corresponds to one or two chapters in your course text Urban Sprawl and Public Health. Additionally, the instructor will set up a few more discussion folders through which we will share some of the products or applications we create in this course. All of the messages and attachments in these discussion folders can be viewed by anyone in this course. Read "posting guidelines" and practice in the discussion folder entitled "Practice Postings" before beginning to make postings for threaded discussions, which start after the Fall workshop.

Components of Threaded Discussion. For each discussion folder that is devoted to chapters in the text, your initiating discussion message must be "up" (posted) by Tuesday of that week/topic. The threaded discussions in each discussion folder will be based on the assigned text readings and related web site investigations. The Class Session Outline provides the names of the discussion folders for each week.

A threaded discussion goes like this:

2. Participate in the threaded discussions of at least three of your colleagues by reading and replying to their initiating posts. You should "participate" on Wednesday and Thursday.

3. Monitor your own threaded discussion by reading and replying to three of the responses you received to your initiating post. You will "monitor" on Thursday and Friday.

In order for the above system to work, you must make your "initiating post" by each Tuesday. Please make the post no later than early evening and earlier if possible. This way, you and your colleagues can begin to read each others' initiating posts and begin to make "participating" posts. Your postings need to be free from grammatical and typographical errors and any URLs provided need to work: Please preview your message before posting it. You will note that VISTA has a "save draft" feature that allows you to periodically save what you are typing so you don't "lose it." For "initiating posts," feel free to first compose it using your word processing program, spell and grammar check it, and then copy and paste it into a "compose message" window in the relevant discussion folder. Then preview it for format. If you want your URLs to "work" as links directly in your message, you will have to enter the URL using the "HTML editor" feature of VISTA.

Here are general posting guidelines for posting to the discussion folders. Please see the helper topics in WebCT Vista for additional assistance on composing and replying to messages in discussion folders.

Detailed Instructions for Initiating, Participating, and Monitoring . Here are detailed instructions for what to include in your initiating, participating, and monitoring posts (messages):

1.Introductory statements to present and interrelate some of the concepts you found most important in readings completed for this class session. Do so in a manner that engages/stimulates interest in the reader.

2. Your perspectives, reactions and/or experiences relative to the assigned reading(s) and any web sites that were visited.

3. One or more idea(s) that you have for doing a learning activity with your HSTA or regular classroom students related to the content of the assigned readings or web sites. Articulate how the learning activity is relaled to concepts/content. Please summarize briefly what the students will do as part of this activity.

4. Substantive questions for your colleagues to stimulate some discussion about the assigned reading(s)/web sites and your reactions to those readings as conveyed by your initiating post. You might also include questions related to your proposed classroom activity.

The instructor will provide an example "initiating post" for the first threaded discussion: Please read it

Participating and Monitoring Posts. No required length is given for the replies that you make to your colleagues, but your replies do need to be substantive and more than just two or three sentences. Points will be deducted for replies that are limited to 2-3 sentences. There are two main purposes of replying: (a) to respond to your colleagues' questions and ideas and (b) to enrich the conversation that is ensuing by contributing other relevant information, perspectives, and so on. If you find that you disagree with something that your colleague states, this is fine but please be respectful in your response. Try to provide a link to a related web site(s) or other source(s) of information (e.g., reference text) as a part of your reply: For Internet sites, please include the "http://" portion and preview the post to insure the URL works. Again, prior to posting, please use the threaded discussion rubric to determine if your participating and monitoring messages are high quality.

Please vary the colleagues to whom you reply, i.e., if you choose to reply to the initiating posts of Mike, Mary and Sue for the Food Composition sessions, then reply to the initiating posts of Sam, Judy and Molly for the Energy Expenditure sessions.

When you are ready to post your reply, please change the title in the subject box from "re: xyz" to a couple words that convey the nature of your reply: It is time consuming to try and decide what to read from a lot of the same "Re: xyz" postings in a threaded discussion.

Making Changes to Your Post . You should preview and edit as needed your message before posting it. However, VISTA also provides the capability for you to "edit" your posting after you have posted it. Another way to "add to your post" is to post a reply to your own message.

An Important Note about Plagiarism. Copying and pasting into your posting information from Internet sites (or from hard copy print material) without using quotation marks and citing the author/title (etc.) and Internet site where relevant, is plagiarism and will result in no credit for the posting. Additionally, it is expected that the majority of all postings will be in the students' own words. Discussion folder postings that are mostly quotations from other sources generally will receive little credit.