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[gourmand601]

Unless the required discussions are substantive (supported by references).... I think they should count very little.

[finallyfullprof]

I use 15% for class discussion and 5% for participation. I define those differently. Discussion counts as their attendance. As long as they write the minimum word count, advance the discussion (no "me too"), write at least two posts on the thread, and avoid major grammatical/mechanical errors, they get all the points.  Participation is tracking their login time and course materials read rate. Blackboard Vista allows me to look at whether they actually spent time reading the posts or just compiled them and marked them all as read a few seconds later. Most of their grade comes from essays and exams.