Week 1 -- Discussion Board Activities Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Introduction

We will be using the built-in Desire2Learn (D2L) discussion board for this class. In D2L, our actual class discussion -- sharing ideas, asking questions, talking about the assignments -- will happen.

***A note about discussion board etiquette*** Because this course is online, most of your interactions with other students and the instructor will take place in discussion boards. As mentioned above you will use the boards to discuss controversial or timely issues in biology, to critique other students' assignments, and to teach each other about biology. When it comes to conversational etiquette, the same rules apply in the discussion boards as would in a “normal” classroom. Keep in mind that we have a diverse class – usually more diverse than in a face-to-face course – and some students might be more easily offended or have different sensibilities than you. You will hear from me in a private email if you post something that I feel could be offensive to other students. In addition, our conversations are “complicated” by the fact that we can’t see each other's facial expressions or hear the tone of each other's voices – this means that sarcasm, for example, could be misinterpreted if we aren’t careful. Calling other students by name, acknowledging other students' points of view in addition to your own, and pointing out what your colleagues did right (not just what they did wrong) whenever you are critiquing an assignment will help foster a friendly discussion board atmosphere.        

Assignments

1. Introductory Statement

To access our D2L community, login to D2L, click on our class, then click on "Discussions" at the course menu towards the top. The current and past discussion topics will be visible by week, and you can click on the one you want to work on.

• For this assignment, you will click on "Week 1 -- Introductory Statement."
• You will see listed a subject, name, and time of other students who have already done this assignment. Feel free to read over their introductory statements by clicking on their subject. (And if you want to reply, the lower pane containing the text of the post, has a "reply" button in the upper left corner).
• When you are ready to post an introductory statement about yourself, click on the button in the upper left corner that says "Start a New Thread."
• Type a subject, then look just below the subject line, where you will see two tabs, "basic" and "advanced." The first one allows you to complete basic text editing tasks while the "advanced" tab provides many more text editing options. Use the advanced tab! You'll need it for later posts. Type your message in the box. You can include anything you want -- perhaps your major, year in school, interests/hobbies, likes/dislikes, where you grew up, etc. You can even post links or a picture of yourself or something that you enjoy. Aim for about 100 words.
• Now look for an icon that has a check mark with "abc" in the lower right corner -- it's a spell check button, and you should use it! Although it's impolite to post messages that you haven't bothered to read over, it's inexcusable to post them without even spell-checking them first. But, the spell-checker isn't perfect, so you should re-read your post as well. "Dominant" and "dormant" are both spelled right, but they don't mean the same thing.
• You may want to draft your assignment in a word processor and paste it into your discussion board post. This approach has several advantages: spell-checking and grammar-checking is easy, you can get the word count, and you can save your assignment in case your internet goes down or D2L crashes. However, when you copy-paste your assignment over to the D2L composition window, be aware that some formatting may change. Your best bet is to use the "Paste from Word" icon.
• Click "Post" when you are done.

2. What's Your Preferred Name?

One more thing -- in this class, you will be calling each other by your first names. But not everybody likes to be called by their "real" first name. There are plenty of Williams who like to be called Bill, plenty of Susans who like to be called Susie, and lots more people who prefer their middle names to their first names. Unfortunately, Desire2Learn doesn't know any of this, so we have set up a discussion board forum called "I like to be called ..."

This is an easy one -- just put in the subject line the name you like to be called, and paste the same thing in the body of the post (D2L won't let you post a blank post). Here's an example:

This way, whenever you are responding to people in the class, you can just glance at this "I like to be called" forum and see each student's preferred name in the subject lines.

After you are done with both of these assignments, declare your work by taking the gradebook declaration quiz for this assignment in the "Declarations" section of Desire2Learn.

(Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM