Discussions – moderation – 800 points (maximum) weekly

Because I believe that knowledge is socially constructed, and leadership skills in a study group is a skill that is rarely taught in university classes, there is extra credit for group work, teaching, and leadership skills.

Thus, I am giving a huge amount of points - 800 – for inspiring others to engage on a specific topic. Moderating a discussion takes a skill that goes much beyond participating in a discussion.

One of the most important skills that you need in life is small group leadership: inspiring people to do their best. If you get hired to work on a team (most jobs require working on a team), you can’t just go to your boss and complain every time someone doesn’t participate fully. Your job as a leader on this team is to do the best with the people you are given. So, if you have a group member who is not working at capacity, inspiring them to participate, and teaching them the skills they need to be their best is a much more fruitful way than complaining to your future boss that someone is not doing their job.

in the end, I do not want to punish people for an inability to inspire another to do work, but I would like to reward success in this skill.

That 800 weekly maximum goes a long way toward the overall percentage of the class.

On the other hand, I do not want students racking up points on any particular skill or on any particular topic, so there is an 800 point maximum for all discussion activities each week.

It is important to me to teach and assess the use of logic and evidence in making non-obvious arguments, and discussion moderation and participation will not necessarily teach students to take care when using such skills.

Discussions – participation – 300 points

I would like students who are pass/fail to be able to engage substantively, so there are points to give away there for just engaging with the material that do not have the structure of arguments and evidence that I have for other assignments. They are meant to be reflections and attempts at using evidence properly with students responding about logical problems, alternative explanations, etc.

If you respond at least three times to a single discussion that someone else moderated, that is 300 points.
If you respond at least three times to two different discussion that someone else moderated, that is 600 points.
If you respond at least three times to three different discussion that someone else moderated, that is 800 points because that is the maximum.