1) How do I get a 100?
In order to get a 100 for a given day, students need to have a 100 in each of the qualitative performance categories and the class needs to have a 100 in Engagement for that day. Students wishing to improve their performance in some particular category should see the following tips:
Text: work on integrating the text in a more precise manner; set the context for a quote you are going to use before you make your point about it; annotate your text so you can move quickly through it to find related evidence on topics that arise within a discussion.
Focus: work on keeping your contributions succinct and on topic; avoid going off on a tangent, or referring to outside information; prepare the text more carefully and delve more deeply into it rather than staying on the surface.
Questioning: work on asking more questions (clarification, follow-up, interpretive, etc.); let your opinions change and evolve over the course of a discussion; avoid holding too hard a line on any particular opinion; ask specific elaboration and clarification questions of individual students. NB: Questions do not necessarily entail ignorance. Some of the most effective questions in seminar are those for which the questioner already has an answer.
Collaboration: make sure you are regulating your participation and not taking up too much air space in the discussion; participate enough to make your points, track the discussion, and summarize where the group is every once in a while; make sure you give credit to people by name when you follow up on their ideas or questions; help other students locate passages in the text if they have trouble.
2) Is it possible for everyone to get a 100 in one class period?
Of course, though this is not to say that it’s especially easy.
3) How do we encourage others to participate?
This is a good question and one with which I often struggle, as it is an important aspect of hitting the 100 mark in Leadership. First, if you see someone trying to get into the discussion, ask them directly if they want to say something. Second, while I would not suggest cold calling on people with vague questions (e.g., “Joe, what do you think?”), specific, leading questions can be much easier to handle, and much more productive, e.g., “Joe, don’t you think that Descartes is talking about the mind and not the body here?” Third, the best way to get someone involved in the discussion is to ask about topics or questions he or she has already addressed in other contexts like small groups or the moodle forum, e.g., “Joe, you were talking about virtue and friendship on the forum. Can you say more about that? What’s the connection there?” Follow-up questions for elaboration and clarification are an easy way to get other folks more involved in the conversation. (This helps your Collaboration score too.) Students who tend to speak only once or twice can be drawn more consistently into the conversation through the use of these types of questions.
4) Does quantity ever impact quality in grading?
Yes, quantity can impact quality positively or negatively. Avoid quantitative extremes of too much or too little. If a student speaks very rarely, it can be very difficult for professors to judge the quality of his or her contributions because of the lack of quantity. If a student speaks too frequently, it can degrade his or her Collaboration or Leadership score. Getting a 100 in Use of the Text, for example, is NOT about quoting the text superficially 50 times per class. It’s about the using the text in a consistently effective and succinct manner.
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5) How do I record, upload & share my reading responses?
Please read through this document, download and save a copy of it. Once you have done this successfully, it should be like any other operation you perform daily using digital media: you will not forget how to do this.