-Melody Trowell, Dallas Christian College

1) Use person's first name in a salutation

2) Minimum 3 sentence Compliment on posting

3) Minimum 3 sentence Comment on posting

4) Minimum 3 sentences Connection on posting.

5) One question?

Where I like Harmonize, is that I can put in multiple deadline 1) initial posting 2) initial response 3) response to question.

"Posting Guidelines

• Your initial post is due on Thursday by midnight.

• Read through your classmates’ initial posts and respond to some of them in the form of a question by midnight Friday. Examples:

  • You could ask questions that will give you a deeper understanding of the initial poster’s opinion.

  • You could ask questions that might challenge the initial poster’s opinion or ask them to defend their opinion in more depth.

  • If you disagree with the initial poster, you could ask them to respond to your counterpoint.

  • You could ask the initial poster how they drew their conclusions.

• Reply to those who asked questions about your initial post by midnight Sunday."

By doing this, I feel I'm accomplishing a couple things: (1) I'm requiring students to put more thought into their replies, because they now have to come up with a question that is relevant to another student's original post, and (2) it helps me focus my own responses, as the instructor. If several students are getting questions asked of them by their peers, it allows me to focus first on students who haven't received any engagement and then circle back to the others.

I have eliminated the number of required responses and original post word count entirely. Rather, I use a rubric to clearly explain grading expectations for quality posts. Additionally, the nature of students asking each other questions naturally increases engagement, post/response length, post/response quality, etc.

Devin Dodson

NMSU-Grants

ddodson@nmsu.edu