Will’s Discussion Post Rubric

Regardless of the rubric, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Demonstrate that you’ve put effort into the material and put thought into your responses
• Explain your thoughts and/or analysis in your own words
• You’re required to make two response posts, but you’re allowed to make as many as you’d like
• When writing a reply post, delete all extraneous information except the specific phrase, sentence, or comment to which you are replying
• Try to write in a way that will be understandable
  • If you need or want to use an unusual word, abbreviation, or expression, provide a definition
  • When providing non-English examples, please provide both a pronunciation and a gloss
  • You won’t be graded on grammar ‘mistakes’, but do your best to check your spelling and write in a way that’ll be understandable to your classmates
• Speak with others using respectful and kind language, and focus your discussion on the ideas, rather than individuals posting them
  • Remember that we all have off days, and treat your classmates with the same respect and kindness you’d want them to use for you
• Where there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer, remember that we’re all on the same team here
  • Remember that everybody’s entitled to an opinion
  • Recall that your life experiences may be fundamentally different from your classmates’
  • You can advocate strongly for your own views, but you will likely not convince everybody, and past a point, it’s better to drop it
• If you’re confident that a classmate’s analysis or response is factually incorrect, be kind and consider it an opportunity to help a classmate learn!
  • Your role in responding is not to knock them down, belittle, or embarrass them. If your response does nothing for your classmate but show that you knew the answer and they didn’t, you’ve failed
  • You can ask a question, rather than assuming an incorrect answer (“How does your approach account for [this piece of data]?”)
  • You can state sources which contradict their approach (e.g. “In the [slides/textbook/literature], it says [this thing instead], here’s the [article/slide/page number]”)
  • You can give your perspective, if it’s not a matter of right/wrong (e.g. “In my experience, that’s not true/grammatical/widely accepted/universal”)
  • You can offer suggestions to tweak their approach (e.g. “Maybe your analysis would work better [in this area] if you changed [these things]?”)
  • The very best response posts will be instructional, and help a classmate to better understand some aspect of the material that they’re struggling with
• Feel free to use humor, but be careful
  • Remember that sarcasm doesn’t play well in text
  • Avoid jokes about sensitive topics like politics, race, religion, national origin, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, family status, disability, etc.
  • Remember that as we discuss and evaluate our conversations, the focus will be on the impact on an individual or group, not the intention or motivation of the speaker
  • Appropriate memes are welcome and encouraged, but should not be the entirety of your post, unless the post is about memes, in which case, go for it.

Rubric for Initial Discussion Posts

For your initial post in the thread, you’ll be graded out of two points. Points will be assigned roughly according to the following rubric, but the final point value is entirely at the instruction team’s discretion:

Two Point Initial Posts are…

• Complete: They address all elements of the question or prompt directly
• Well-Reasoned: They show clear effort and careful thought about the issue at hand
• Clear and Concise: They provide the information requested, in an understandable format, without drowning us in additional words
• Relevant: They address the prompt directly, and digress only where helpful to the argumentation

Additionally, full points might be awarded for a post which has some of the problems below, but is sufficiently exceptional in another domain to balance it out. For instance, a post which fails to account for one element of the prompt, or doesn’t present a complete analysis, but provides thoughtful discussion of their difficulties, or which raises thought-provoking questions about the matter at hand may still be awarded a ‘2’ at our complete discretion.

One Point Initial Posts might be…

• Incomplete: They address the question or prompt only in part, or do not represent a complete analysis of the question
• Poorly thought out: They seem to be rushed or careless, and don’t seem to represent careful consideration
• Unclear: They include argumentation which is hard to follow, or the post is so long/short as to prevent ease of understanding
• Partially relevant: Although the post engages with the prompt to some extent, the bulk of the post doesn’t address the matter at hand

Zero Point Initial Posts might be…

• Missing: Obviously, no post means no points
• Thoughtless: These posts show no meaningful evidence of consideration of the prompt or questions at hand
• Incomprehensible: If we can’t understand your argument, we can’t evaluate it
• Off-Topic: A post which does not actually address the prompt in any meaningful way
• Seriously Problematic: See the “Serious Issues” section below

Rubric for Response Posts

Your responses to other people’s posts (or posts as part of an ongoing discussion) are graded differently, and are worth one point each. The means that to get a 4/4 on your discussion, you must post one quality initial post, and two separate quality replies.

One Point Response Posts are…

• Relevant: They show specific signs of having read and responded to a particular post (rather than a general ‘Cool post 👍!’)
• Helpful: They attempt to help a classmate, either by expanding on their thoughts, by sharing a different perspective, highlighting relevant data or literature, or by providing information or pointers to help the student arrive at a correct answer
• Thought-Provoking: The response builds on some element of the original post, and expands the conversation or brings a new perspective
• Kind: The post, where applicable, treats the other student(s) compassionately as fellow humans
• Substantial: Although only a sentence or two is required, we need to see some evidence of the above, and it’s much more difficult to do that in a few words

Zero Point Response Posts are…

• Missing: Again, no post no points.
• Irrelevant: The post does not engage with the topic of discussion, nor with the prior post
• Unhelpful: The post is roughly “That’s wrong” or “I disagree” with no attempt to expand, share an alternative perspective, or teach
• Unkind or Disrespectful: Posts which are condescending, disrespectful, or otherwise unkind
• Content-less: Posts which offer nothing to the discussion (“Nice analysis!”, “👍”, “It’s ‘their’, not ‘there’”, “Cool story bro!”, “I agree” or “me too” with nothing else added)
• Seriously Problematic: See the “Serious Issues” section below

If you’re unsure what to post for a response…

Consider making a response like one of the following:

• Sincere Praise: “Wow, you did a really good job explaining the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammaticality! I wouldn’t have thought to use…”
• Commiseration: “Yeah, I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do with that morpheme too. I decided it must be […] because of […], but I can see why you’d have made this call.”
• Clarification: “So, I think I get what you’re saying, but in your analysis, do you mean you’re treating […] and […] as the same?”
  • Please only do this when there’s an actual ambiguity.
• Suggestion: “One thing to consider would be to treat […] and […] differently. I did that in my analysis, and it seemed to work better for […]”
• Repair: “Did you mean ‘DEscriptively ungrammatical’ for part one there?”
• Helping: “I think you’ve got these two terms backwards. […] is when…”
  • Remember, your goal here is to help compassionately, and to leave the person feeling better about the material and ideally, better about themselves too. Channel your inner kindly professor here.
• Correcting yourself: It may well be that once you view other people’s work, you decide that you missed something, and you need to fix your analysis. In that case, you can reply directly to your own post, and explain the mistake you made, ‘fixing’ your analysis. This is really helpful for you, as well as for classmates who might be struggling. Remember, you’re all learning this, so making a mistake isn’t embarassing!

Serious Problems

Finally, you will be awarded zero points for the entire discussion if any of your posts are…

• Personal Attacks: You can disagree with a classmate, but engage with the content, not the person
  • Ad hominem attacks, slurs, personal insults, or direct disparagement (“You’re an idiot!”) will not be tolerated
  • Direct use of (rather than discussion of) language meant to exclude, demean, or make others feel unwelcome will land you in this same group
• Abusive or Angry: These discussion boards should be a supportive environment for learning. Abusive, angry, needlessly cruel, or disrespectful posts are not acceptable
  • It’s fine to say things like “Your post is incorrect, you need to account for…” or to compassionately highlight a weakness of an analysis or approach. It’s not OK to say “Your post is stupid because […]” or “That’s an idiotic analysis”
  • Even if you’re frustrated, make a conscious effort to be kind to your fellow students
  • If you’re writing a post through gritted teeth, take a walk, and post again later, or choose a different post to respond to
• Trolling: Sharing your opinions on course-related issues is encouraged, but if we get the sense that you’re “trolling”, that’s not OK. Trolling here could look like…
  • Courting controversy or baiting arguments by introducing sensitive topics not relevant to the discussion
  • Trying to “get a rise out of” or “trigger” people by poking at sensitive issues
  • Making controversial or hurtful statements and falling back on “I’m just joking! Don’t be so easily offended!”
  • Again, remember that as we discuss and evaluate our conversations, the focus will be on the impact on an individual or group, not the intention or motivation of the speaker
• ALL CAPS: As it generally comes across as anger, POSTS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS WILL NOT EARN POINTS.
• Hallucinations and Generative AI use: In the age of LLMs and ChatGPT, posts which show pointedly false information presented confidently, hallucinations, or references which don’t exist, will receive 0 points for the entire discussion. It’s tempting to use GenAI to ‘save some time’, but you’re just hurting yourself, in practice, both in terms of learning and grades.
  • It’s worth making sure you understand everything you’re saying, to make sure you’re better than the machine.

Students who repeatedly engage in these kinds of posting after the initial incident may administratively and pre-emptively lose all discussion credit for the quarter. If you see this happening in a discussion, please email the instructional team to let us know ASAP

Acknowledgements

Thanks to this posting, among others, for ideas

All content © Copyright 2011-2025 Will Styler unless otherwise licensed. Please contact for relicensing.