BlackBoard Discussions
When in classes, I try to help students whenever possible, whether it is helping classmates to better understand content or with technical assistance.
Blackboard Example 1
While in IT510, the topic came up of designing with plain language. One of my classmates asked,
"how do we draw the line between using 'Plain English' and avoid not being detailed enough as being extremely detailed has been something highly stressed in this class."
I provided the following response:
"The purpose of plain language is not to reduce content. What we need to focus on with our instruction is simplification and clarity.
For example:
In regards to our course project, it is extremely critical that we all thoroughly comprehend the importance of using an effective goal analysis.
That's wordy. Here's a simplified version that says the same thing.
To do well on our projects, we need to understand the goal analysis.
It is the same content, but unnecessary words have been eliminated and other words have been simplified."
Dr. Knowlton replied with the following:
"Benjamin's answer is dead on! I couldn't have said it better myself. His example is GREAT."
In this example, Dr. Knowlton's response seems to indicate that my contribution had merit and he went on to encourage others to pay attention to my post.
Blackboard Example 2
Also in IT510, a student asked the following about rubrics:
"...do you as the professor feel like we are not using the rubric enough when commenting on each other's work, or are you not seeing enough use of the rubric in our rough draft(s). Also, I think I understand your point as being that the rubric is the guideline for how these projects will be graded, therefore it behooves everyone to make full use of it as a means of completing the best project possible. Is this correct?"
I replied with the following:
"There are basically two purposes for the rubric:
1. To guide us as we do the project
2. To evaluate the final project
There are a few ways that we, as a class, will be using the rubric during the course.
Individually, as we create our projects we can use the rubric as a self-evaluation tool to help ensure that we provide all of the necessary information.
As a class, we are helping each other learn and Dave is basically our guide. We can look at your project and point out things that you might have overlooked. The rubric then is used as a both a guide and evaluation tool. Plus analyzing another person's project for improvement has the benefit of helping to show us areas where our own projects might be lacking.
Finally, in the end, Dave will grade each of our projects using the rubric to provide a defined set of criteria. This helps prevent the assignment from being graded subjectively."
Dr. Knowlton replied with the following:
"I couldn't have said it better than Benjamin did."