So - I am grading discussions and I realized that it's a bit frustrating.
Like most instructors, I ask students to respond to a post. HOWEVER, I sometimes ask students to (politely) DISagree with a post. Even when I ask them to agree, I ask them to state the reason for their agreement.
(LIFE SKILL - in any situation, speaking up is MOST important when you have a logical, rational, reason to DISagree. And when we do agree - we should at least understand WHY we agree.
If we only require them to agree, and allow posts like "That's a good point!" and "I like what you wrote!" we are not teaching at COLLEGE level. That drives me insane when I see that allowed on other discussion boards.)
Anyhoo....
I really want to understand howI(if) their response addresses the points in the original post. Only issue, the original post is not there. Going through the posts is definitely possible, and I do it, but it requires a second monitor and a LOT of scrolling to find the thread (especially if you have many students.)
As an instructor, I find the responses equally, if not MORE, important than the posts - it's the best way we have of imitating an actual course where students interact with each other and share ideas. But they are meaningless unless we know the ORIGINAL POST TO WHICH THEY RESPONDED.
It would really be great to have that embedded in Speedgrader. It seems like it would be relatively easy to create a code that would include the original post UNDER the response as we are grading.
Without it, I feel we are just grading for "completion" and not the "learning outcomes" that are supposed to be a part of the course. Which is actually pretty dismal for a college-level course.
