Grading Rubric

Discussion Participation

About the Minimum Requirement

I have an absolute minimum requirement of three messages per week. If you post less than three messages a week, then you cannot get better than a D for discussion. I don't even bother to evaluate the messages. Once you have met the minimum requirement, only then do all the considerations below kick into effect.

Why Three?

Because that's a reasonable load in a class with thirty students. It means ninety messages a week from the students plus messages from yours truly. I've never had all thirty students meeting the minimum each and every week, so in practice the number comes in around 120 messages a week for you to read. That's a fairly substantial number and is comparable in workload to reading around a book or book-and-a-half over the semester.

At four messages a week, the number rises to around 150 messages a week, and so on. That's still manageable, but remember I'm setting a minimum, in expectation that most students will exceed it. So, three a week feels about right.

What's a Week?

If you're fretting over this, you're fretting over the wrong stuff. My class weeks run Monday through Sunday, for no particular reason, but you should not be planning to do all your posting on Sunday night, or some such. While I understand time constraints and the demands of work and family (I went through all that myself), I have found that students who post only once a week don't get a good grade. This is not a judgment on my part, but an observation made from over ten years of teaching in this medium. Once-a-week posters are like the student in a live class who comes only once a week. You can get by, no doubt. But you won't learn much and only the exceptional student will be able to pull an A doing that. It's your call; I'm telling you how things look from my vantage point. If you read the student advice in the Study Guide, you'll hear the same message there.

Sometimes, things happen, and you wind up posting two messages in a week. This never happens to students who participate at a high rate. It tends to happen to the student who posts the minimum three and rarely or never more. You walk a tightrope, sometimes you fall off. If it should happen, don't worry about your grade. I look at the pattern of your participation over the course of the semester, and a week or two just doesn't mean much. Do worry, however, if it happens early in the semester and then happens again, because it may turn into a habit. You could easily find yourself eight weeks into the course in which you failed to meet the minimum for half those weeks. This is a problem because you cannot make up the work. I'm not actually interested in volume, I'm interested in participation. You cannot go back and make up a week of participation any more than you can go back in time and make up attending a live class. You miss it, the damage is done. So, don't fret over minimums and don't fret over which messages "count" for which week. Do worry about being fully engaged in the course, and the rest will take care of itself.

Evaluation

Enough of minimums, which are necessary but not uplifting. On to how I evaluate your discussion participation.

All evaluation of your discussion is subjective. I give this rubric not so you can "figure out" your discussion grade, because you cannot. Only I can.

Still less do I provide this as a template by which you can aim for a particular grade. This is not a checklist. Learning is not a guaranteed process and it doesn't happen the same way for every person.

I do provide the rubric as one tool to help you understand that discussion plays a crucial role in my course, and that there are ways to judge the quality of the participation. I hope that you can use this rubric as a way to improve the quality of your discussion, not only in this course but in others as well.

Note that in the descriptions I am indicating tendencies rather than absolute rules. For example, it's perfectly all right to post a message that says "gee, I didn't know that" or "I agree" or "here's something that just struck me as interesting". Those are normal parts of the conversation. But when a student who posts fifty messages over the semester has forty that are these sort of comments, that's not engaging in historical discussion. That's just talking about the past. There's a difference, and that difference will be reflected in the grade. On the other hand, the student who posts fifty messages and forty are substantive clearly is taking part in scholarly dialogue, and again this will be reflected in the grade.

Finally, remember that you will receive two progress reports in which I will let you know specifically how you are doing in discussion. This will allow you to make adjustments.

	Superior	Average	Poor
Analysis / Interpretation	The message uses historical sources, including outside as well as required reading. In addition, it demonstrates that the student has gained new understanding of the topic.	Some messages do analysis or interpretation well, but a significant number do not. This might either be because the analysis was not done well, or because it was not attempted (that is, was simply opinion or hearsay).	Messages generally show little evidence of historical analysis, consisting instead of opinion and feelings and impressions.
Scholarly Dialogue	All sources are cited. Argumentation is from the evidence. No ad hominem arguments.	Citations are sometimes missing, are incorrect, or are from a poor source (e.g., a K12 internet site or an encyclopedia).	Messages regularly lack any sort of citation. Arguments are from opinion, not from evidence.
Writing Skill	Sentences are clear and wording is unambiguous. Correct word choice, correct spelling, correct grammar. Writing style can still be conversational rather than formal. The writing does not have to be flawless, but it will be better than average writing.	Ordinary, good writing. Lapses are regular and patterned, but do not undermine the communication or the persuasiveness of the argument.	Grammar, spelling, and/or word choice errors are frequent enough that the sense of the message is lost or muddled.
Participation	Messages contribute to ongoing conversations, as replies to questions or comments, or as new questions or comments. Messages that originate a thread usually generate responses. Student does not start a topic or pose a question and then abandon it.	Some messages contribute to ongoing conversations, but others are disconnected. If the student starts a new thread, sometimes there is follow-up but sometimes there isn't. Student tries to further the class discussion but is not successful a significant number of times. Or, student posts a significant (though still a minority) number of messages that are off-the-cuff and do not contribute substantively.	Messages are unconnected with what others are saying, as if there is no conversation. No replies to other messages. Student never answers someone else's question. When student asks a question, there's no acknowledgment to any responses.