Principles for Comments and Replies

Posting comments and replies to the reading responses and drafts of others will be a primary means of class interaction and discussion. Instructors may promote blog posts to the front page of the course website. There, everyone will respond to and discuss the readings, drafts, or other work posted to our course website. The course description explains the purpose of this coursework:

All comments and replies to another's blog post should follow effective rhetorical strategies for networking with others on the Web. (Readings from the course text or handouts may provide additional guidelines to follow.)

• Keep threads alive and relevant.
• Follow-up comments with further discussion.
• Think of your comments and replies as part of a lively class discussion in which everyone participates.

When commenting and replying to blog posts on the course's front page, you are required to

• Read through the posts on the course home page referred to by the assignment.
• Before using the comment and reply features for the first time, you might want to consider reviewing How to Post Comments and Replies .
• Strive to be thoughtful and analytical in your comments.
• Try to find something new to say instead of saying what has already been said in the original post and in other comments already posted.
• Feel free to share personal experiences which shape your views on the topic discussed.

You should also

• Provide links to additional resources on the web which would better inform the discussion. You should always link to any other texts on the Web you mention, even those on the course website.
• Contend with and/or support the original blog post. If you are criticizing what the blogger has said, remember to do so respectfully, which encourages further dialogue. "This sucks" would not be an appropriate response. Neither would "That's great!" if you don't explain what you mean.
• Direct attention to related and relevant issues. You may find that none of the posts on the class website about a particular set of readings confront what you feel is an important issue on the assigned texts. As long as it is related to the general topic of the readings or the topic of this class, feel free to post a comment which turns the conversation in a new direction (use the subject line to clearly specify this new direction).
• Occasionally post to blog posts not on our front page. If you like, you may choose to post three of your comments or replies to any other recently submitted blog posting on the class site from the instructors and/or other students, whether or not those posts focus on the topic up for discussion.
• Use emoticons and acronyms to convey additional information (such as tone and intonation).

For those of you wishing to do more than the minimum requirements of the course, you might visit the class website additional times per week and post new comments and/or replies to any of the blog posts.