Grading Discussions

 This is a tricky one! You want students to voluntarily participate in online discussions, but this is not always the case!

 

Students need and like structure, so you must provide it. One way to do this (unfortunately) is to require and grade discussion participation.

 

Typically, this is done by stating requirements for discussion guidelines in the form of a checklist or rubric (matrix).

 

Note: making discussion guidelines too complicated can hamper the learning process. Students can become so caught up in trying to understand and satisfy the requirement that they post simply to get the requirement behind them to get the points. There needs to be enough flexibility in the requirements to allow for natural, genuine participation.