Mark R. Hatlie

Standard Policies and Advice on Participation in the Online Classroom

I try not to give students a clear-cut catalogue of questions to answer every week. Lists lead to a boring classroom, where students simply each submit a list of answers. It is possible that students might react to each other in that kind of situation, but it is rare because each student is addressing the material in a similar way.

Instead, I try to keep my assignments open-ended. When I do ask questions for students to consider answering in the conferences, they are usually not very specific, but open-ended, broad questions. This approach has the advantage of giving all participants many options to pursue, many opportunities to bring their own insite and ideas into the conversation. The disadvantage is that it is often hard to just look up an answer in the book. You have to start thinking historically, perhaps even creatively, to find something to say.

When submitting a posting to the discussion group or conference, the point is to demonstrate that you are engaging the reading and engaging what the instructor and the other students are saying about the reading. There are various strategies you can try, depending on the reading, your ideas, your abilities or particular knowledge. Try some variety:

Analyze: Much of the material we read in most of my classes is primary source material, documents from history, not about history. There are lots of resources available online about how to interpret primary sources. Consult some of that material and give a shot at it. This means considering who the author is and his/her place in society, the intended audience, bias in the document, circumstances under which it was written, etc. See, for example, this guide for high school students or this guide for college history students (scroll down to the second section, on "Reading a primary source"). Here is a good guide to what primary sources are and why we even bother to read them.
Summarize the reading: That is an "easy" way to do the assignment, so don't always choose this option. It is a way to set a foundation for further discussion or get a grip on material you don't quite understand.
Comparisons: Comparing some aspect of the reading to the situation today, to an experience you have had, or better, to another historical circumstance you are aware of, is yet another approach. Don't overdo this. Students who glance at the readings and then spend all their time talking about now instead of about the nuts and bolts of the issue at hand are overdoing it.
Build on others: Perhaps a classmate has an interesting interpretation of the reading. It is worthless to just respond tersely "I agree" or "Great post!" or "You're wrong here." It is highly valuable, however, to engage that posting by supporting its conclusions with further evidence or more detail on the evidence presented, or contradicting it with counter-examples.

IMPORTANT: Doing history is about formulating opinions and arguments based on evidence. For online discussion, that means the following: It is perfectly okay to express an "opinion." That is what historians do. There is no such thing as "unbiased" history. Sometimes - often- the instructor will even request that you form and express an opinion. But opinions just hanging there are dead ends. Don't just say, "I think..." without "...because..." coming later in your statement. Don't just tell us you "think" St. Augustine is a pessemist. Tell us where, in the readings, you got that impression. Don't just tell us you think Las Casas' account of the Amerindians is "propaganda." Tell us what it is about hiswritings or their context that lead you to that conclusion. If you think Soviet "deep battle" is the same thing as German "Blitzkrieg" or Jacob Burckhardt is a blowhard, that is just dandy. But the history-relevance of any statement is in your justification for it.

How much do you have to write? That is hard to say. As a general rule of thumb for a 100-level course, I like to see two paragraphs or so of substantive comment to come in at about "average." It is possible to write 10 pages of drivel, of course. And some students write less, but frequently, scattering their remarks throughout various responses to their classmates. Most prefer one posting. Try to find a compromise between these extremes. You can do that best by:

Visiting the classroom early in the week to get the assignment.
Returning early with a first reaction to the reading. Post one, two or three substantive paragraphs about it.
At that time, visit the other student submissions and, if you see an opening, react to one or more of them.
Then return again two more times before the conference ends to see what is going on. Post feedback to people who have reacted to what you have written, post feedback to others whose postings you now see and which seem interesting in some way.

This guide is meant to be a road to the middle ground between A) giving students a 100% accurate "code" for how to just jump through particular hoops to get a particular grade and B) leaving students totally hanging when it comes to participation.