ScholarBlog Assignment

During Week 4, we will have our weekly discussion on this site, so you can experience blogging as an assignment.

This assignment will prepare you for the creation of your own discussion rubric. In place of our weekly discussion on Canvas, you will publish a blog post (maximum 300 words) on our class website that addresses the following prompts about your discussion rubric:

  • Identify your audience: Everything we teach needs to be designed for our particular audience. Who are your learners? Are they undergrad or graduate students? Are they incoming freshman or seniors preparing for graduation? What level of experience are they coming in with? Do they have life experience or work experience or subject matter experience?
  • Setting Standards: What kind of discussion do you want to facilitate in your class? What does a high quality post look like? Do you need to set a minimum or maximum word count? Also, are you going to ask learners to support their claims with evidence? Should they post URL’s or include citations for their evidence?
  • Promoting Interaction: How will you set expectations for interaction between learners and your class? What sort of behavior are you expecting to see in the online classroom in terms of civility and respect for one another? Just like in a face-to-face discussion, learners in an online discussion may need a little nudging to engage each other.

Before publishing your post, choose a Creative Commons or public domain image that supports or represents your post and insert it as a header. This image will become your post’s thumbnail on the main page.

After publishing your post, return to this assignment page and click the “Mark as Done” button at the top right of the screen so it will be counted toward your badge!

Think of this as a form of public scholarship where you talk about your own work as a teacher grounded in a pedagogical model. Later, you might want to use this content in developing your own online teaching portfolio.


Image attribution: “DiscussionImageFinal” (Public Domain) by Rabin Pamela