Hi all I tend to concur with those who favor using electronic bulletin boards (BB's) "intentionally" for learning purposes. I have used them off and on, but have not used them well thus far. Nonetheless, I still believe them helpful and would suggest that the fact so many students today are becoming familiar with this form of communication, suggests we should consider using it more in teaching.
My approach to a lot of pedagogic issues has been to keep it optional. I do this with my service-learning work, and find it works well. Some do service learning, and some do a library research project I designed as an alternative. However, with electronic bulletin boards, keeping it optional has not been very successful, from my vantage point. Like Sarah notes, there tends to be a core that participates regularly, and (in my case) a majority that does not participate at all. I think electronic BB's are most likely to be effective if students feel an intrinsic compulsion to participate. They should want to do it, which implies to me that for some, there will need to be a reward system. If we offer an initial discussion question, and then simply tell students we expect them to contribute (but again, there is no reward / punishment associated with the pedagogy), we will probably just get the "some do, some don't" results. Thus, I would like to ask, more directly, how can we effectively assess participation? Is participation enough, with a qualitative scale of "X points because your entry seems sincere", v. "0 points because your entry seems to be fodder"? Is a more direct, quantitative grading system available (e.g., have some of you used tests and quizzes associated directly with the BB's)? If so, what results are you getting? Who does well and who does poorly? Also, assuming we use this pedagogy for assessment purposes, what proportion of the final grade seems reasonable? Alternatively, I truly appreciate Sarah's model of responding to each student posting. On the other hand, I personally worry that "class size" becomes a limiting factor. For example, I have one intro. class of 30 and one intro. class of 75 - the latter would make for more work on my part. So should I assess fewer assignments over the course of the semester in larger classes? I know some of you probably teach intro. sections with 200 students. Would you use / have you used graduate students to assess? If so, what instructions would you / do you give to your teaching assistants? Peace to all Robert Robert J. Hironimus-Wendt, Ph.D. Sociology and Anthropology Western Illinois University 1 University Circle Macomb, IL 61455-1390 phone: (309) 298-1081 fax: (309) 298-1857 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "It doesn't matter how strong your opinions are. If you don't use your power for positive change, you are indeed part of the problem, helping to keep things the way they are." -Coretta Scott King --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
