Discussions

• All online courses with the new structure will contain one (1) Discussion Question (DQ) each week.
• You must respond to that DQ by the third day of the course week (Thursday).
• You must also make two (2) other replies by the end of the week (Monday).

Participation

Making the minimum participation requirement of three (3) total substantive posts over two (2) separate days in the week. This includes your initial response to the discussion prompt and two (2) replies to other posts.

Please keep in mind:

• The Attendance policy has changed for classes starting on or after July 1, 2019:
  •  Only posts made in the Blackboard Discussion threads or Assignment Submissions count for attendance.
  • You must post something on at least one (1) day within each week to make attendance.
  • Blackboard Messages and Course Room sessions are not counted as Academic Related Activities (ARA).
  • In courses using third-party software (i.e. McGraw-Hill Connect or Wiley), the third-party work does not count toward attendance.
• As always, instructors have control of grading Assignments in the classroom. This includes setting standards for content that counts as a substantive post, whether to accept late posts, and the distribution of points for each post.
• As with all course Assignments, faculty maintain the ability to make changes to the standard Syllabus requirements, including participation.

• Due to academic freedom, it is at the faculty's discretion to change due dates on any Assignment other than Signature Assignments.
• The instructor's adjustments to Assignments or DQ due dates have to be reasonable (e.g. Due dates should be on Tuesday and Wednesday).
• There is an additional complication because some programs have different requirements as to how many DQs are in the class and how many responses are required per DQ, so it makes it difficult to have specifics in a Knowledgebase article.
• Typically, in the MSP and MSC programs there should be a total of three (3) DQs each week. The first requires three (3) responses, the second requires three (3) response, and the third requires two (2) responses. The due date on the responses could vary depending on what the faculty dictates, so it is important for you to review the specifics according to the instructor in each class.
• You should only use available Discussions within the classroom to post your responses. A complete list of the questions can be found in the following locations:
  • Discussions link to the upper-right of the classroom.

    

  • Individual Weekly folders through the classroom Course Content list.

    

  • Upon returning to the Course Content page, Discussion messages containing new activity since your last visit are identified with a purple circle.

• You can use the refresh icon to load any new conversations or Discussion posts since you have opened the page.

• Within a given Discussion, click your name in the Participants list to the right of the screen to filter and view your own activity.

• Blackboard does not automatically track participation. Students will have to track it manually.

• Blackboard Discussion responses spell checking is done by the browser. Please ensure you enable that feature in your browser options.