next »

[bone_gal]

In your online classes, how much of the final grade comes from discussions?

I'm considering some changes to my class which would bump the discussions from about 35% of the final grade to 45% of the final grade. The other major components of the grade are problem sets (~20% final grade) and essay exams (downgrading from 40% to 30% of final grade, which is where the extra 10% of discussions would come from). This is an intro level community college class. Is 45% too much for discussions?

[mathprofdk]

That seems like a crazy amount to me, but I'm sure it's subject dependent.  I was actually going to ask a similar question about my field.

I just finished my first semester teaching an online business stats course, and I have one discussion question each week of the course.  The students are required to make an initial post and two replies.  I made the discussions 10% of the grade, and I either need to be much more rigorous in my assessment or lower that amount, because it ended up giving one student a C when the student really earned a D.

Can you explain your discussions a bit and why you feel they're worth that amount?  What do the discussions involve?  And how do you rate discussions for your on-campus classes?

[sciencephd]

Is 45% too much for discussions?

Yes.  In any context, weighting subjective judgments so highly is something to avoid whenever possible.

[goldenapple]

If you're going to put that much weight on something, it should also be an area where students will have an opportunity to improve. For instance, if they were submitting pieces of writing, they could receive corrections and do better on the next piece of writing. But if they're participating in a forum, then the level of improvement you can demand is likely very small, and the amount of direct feedback and correction is probably also minimal.

If you want discussion boards to be worth more, then you may have to structure them more and offer students some kind of assessment of the content of their comments.

[wanna_writemore]

I have a blended class (half online, half face to face).  The in-class attendance/participation is worth 10%, online discussions are worth 15%.  The online discussion grades are actually 3, worth 5% each - one for weeks 1-5, one for wks 6-10, and one for wks 11-15.  The idea is that getting the grades partway through will jumpstart the slackers into participating.  It worked reasonably well, although certainly there were still a lot of slackers.

[magistra]

The answer depends very much on the subject and the requirements, but 45% sounds high.  Posts can be worth quite a bit, though.  I'd give prompts or questions to start them off if you want longer posts.  Detail how many posts need to be original and how many need to be responses.

But what you really need is this: a rubric.  Make sure the students know what's expected and how posts are graded.  This will help you to grade, too.  Give feedback on posts.  If it's half their grade, they need to know exactly what they need to do and what's missing.  If what you really want them to do is weekly mini-essays, then 45% might be fine, but make sure they know exactly what "discussion posts" means, and be prepared to do the grading.

Basically, it doesn't matter how much they're worth.  What's important is that you're satisfied with the amount -- that there's a real basis for it based on what you want students to learn or be able to do; that the grade is commensurate with the work performed; that the requirements, assessment, rationale,  etc. are stated up front; and that you follow up with the grading.

Thus, as so often in life, a good syllabus and rubric are your friends.

[expatinuk]

Participation in my online classes is 30%. Students are given weekly readings and there's a BBS topic set for each article.

In each topic there's an initial question. Students rate each other's posts. They are supposed to DISCUSS the article. I do not want posts on a wall.

Grade is determined by how many posts a student has and what the rating is. There's no set number that they are supposed to post each week. Instead the grade is calculated by looking at the total number of posts on a topic and that student's percentage of those posts... with a factor of how those posts have been rated by the students.

Ratings are on a 5 point scale:

5 - on topic and advances the discussion
4 - on topic with some advance on the discussion
3 - on topic
2 - not on topic but adding a relevant/interesting point of interest
1 - not on topic and adds nothing to the discussion.

[sciencephd]

Participation in my online classes is 30%. Students are given weekly readings and there's a BBS topic set for each article.

In each topic there's an initial question. Students rate each other's posts. They are supposed to DISCUSS the article. I do not want posts on a wall.

Grade is determined by how many posts a student has and what the rating is. There's no set number that they are supposed to post each week. Instead the grade is calculated by looking at the total number of posts on a topic and that student's percentage of those posts... with a factor of how those posts have been rated by the students.

Ratings are on a 5 point scale:

5 - on topic and advances the discussion
4 - on topic with some advance on the discussion
3 - on topic
2 - not on topic but adding a relevant/interesting point of interest
1 - not on topic and adds nothing to the discussion.

"Students rate each other's posts" ...So it's basically peer grading worth  30% ?  I wouldn't take such a class.

[expatinuk]

Participation in my online classes is 30%. Students are given weekly readings and there's a BBS topic set for each article.

In each topic there's an initial question. Students rate each other's posts. They are supposed to DISCUSS the article. I do not want posts on a wall.

Grade is determined by how many posts a student has and what the rating is. There's no set number that they are supposed to post each week. Instead the grade is calculated by looking at the total number of posts on a topic and that student's percentage of those posts... with a factor of how those posts have been rated by the students.

Ratings are on a 5 point scale:

5 - on topic and advances the discussion
4 - on topic with some advance on the discussion
3 - on topic
2 - not on topic but adding a relevant/interesting point of interest
1 - not on topic and adds nothing to the discussion.

"Students rate each other's posts" ...So it's basically peer grading worth  30% ?  I wouldn't take such a class.

Note the: with a factor of how those posts have been rated by the students.

[sciencephd]

Participation in my online classes is 30%. Students are given weekly readings and there's a BBS topic set for each article.

In each topic there's an initial question. Students rate each other's posts. They are supposed to DISCUSS the article. I do not want posts on a wall.

Grade is determined by how many posts a student has and what the rating is. There's no set number that they are supposed to post each week. Instead the grade is calculated by looking at the total number of posts on a topic and that student's percentage of those posts... with a factor of how those posts have been rated by the students.

Ratings are on a 5 point scale:

5 - on topic and advances the discussion
4 - on topic with some advance on the discussion
3 - on topic
2 - not on topic but adding a relevant/interesting point of interest
1 - not on topic and adds nothing to the discussion.

"Students rate each other's posts" ...So it's basically peer grading worth  30% ?  I wouldn't take such a class.

Note the: with a factor of how those posts have been rated by the students.

Fudge factor.

[expatinuk]

My main objective is to get the students to discuss the readings. I do not want a long essay posted. I want them to us the BBS as a seminar forum. They are only given 1 week to read and discuss. I do not overload them with tons of pages of reading. But what I do give them is thought provoking, and it's EVERY week. I want them to THINK about what they've read and how the themes/topics fit together.

So, if I have fellow students RATE the posts... that stops students from waiting until the last day to post initially. If you post at 11:55 p.m. on the last day a topic is live... then there's little chance you're going to get your post rated.

This is why students get the maximum rating from their fellow students by ADVANCING the topic.

I find that this works quite well.... and by the mid point in the semester I'm not posting much at all. I watch the discussion and add something that I think may have been missed... but for the most part not much is missed by that point in the semester.

I might add, these are graduate level classes and the students are all over the world.

[mathprofdk]

I might add, these are graduate level classes and the students are all over the world.

Ah, that's an important detail!  I'm still struggling with ways to get first-year community college students to contribute to discussion posts in a statistics class.  That's why I've been requiring a certain number of posts.

I like your suggestion for using the ratings as a component of their grade, and I also like your 1-5 rubric, too.  Thanks for sharing!

[bone_gal]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! You've confirmed my gut feeling that 45% was too much. I like having a distribution of about 1/3 discussions, 1/3 essay exams and 1/3 problem sets. So I'm going to hold off making the course changes I was thinking about until I have time to do it "right" and keep the other assignments in line with my overall scheme.

Also, I do have pretty rigorous discussions and hear from students that they take a bit of time, so I don't mind having them worth a larger chunk of the class. They have weekly discussion requirements where they have to post at least three quality messages (I define quality for them, must have citations, refer to course concepts, etc.), and spread out over at least two days (one of which is Mon-Wed). So they can't do everything at the last minute.

[bone_gal]

I'm still struggling with ways to get first-year community college students to contribute to discussion posts in a statistics class.  That's why I've been requiring a certain number of posts.

I like your suggestion for using the ratings as a component of their grade, and I also like your 1-5 rubric, too.  Thanks for sharing!

I also teach a 100 level community college class, and I find it takes a few weeks to get students up to speed on what I require in discussions (and I usually email each student a few weeks into class to touch base about how they are doing in discussions... It's a form email that I cut and paste parts of, so it doesn't take much time).

But for me, one of the main things is having discussions that are worth enough points to make it worthwhile to students. If each discussion is only worth 1% of the final grade, then why should they bother? Sure, I know the points add up, but it's easy to skip it if they think it's not worthwhile. And definitely have different points for levels of participation (what if poor quality? What if posted all on the same day? What if only post one message? Etc.)

[mathprofdk]

And definitely have different points for levels of participation (what if poor quality? What if posted all on the same day? What if only post one message? Etc.)

Good point.  I currently have 0, 1, or 2 in three categories: content, format, and # of posts (they have to post and make two replies).  I know I definitely need more points for the content, and I like the 5-point scale mentioned earlier.

How would you assess the issue of them posting on the same day?  Currently, I have a deadline for the initial post, and then two days later another deadline for the two replies.  It's worked out OK, I think.  The big issue I have is I can check up on students, and some are only reading a few posts.  I'm not sure how to assess that, or if I should.  It's easy enough for them to just mark all the posts as read.