Week Four

Assignments & Discussion Forums

1. Appreciate all the reasons persistence through a 2 or 4-year college is so difficult.
2. Become confident that their non-graduate status is no reflection on their intelligence.
3. Develop critical thinking and analytical skills through the examination of the college curriculum.
4. Explore the changing and evolving role of credentialism in shaping culture and society.

OER Assignments – In both OER knowledge treasure hunt assignments the student is asked to search Google and provided with instructional videos about finding OER, then they are asked to refer to one source return and do a knowledge check. Sample instruction: After Visiting The Constitution Center https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution check your knowledge with this interactive flip card game:

• DISCUSSION BOARD ASSIGNMENT:Please list to all of the podcasts posted, and select one of the podcasts (or read the transcript), in order to then complete the mandatory discussion board question for your podcast selection choice (feel free to preview the discussion prompts via the links below before making your selection).Well answered discussion posts can earn up to 20 points – See attached Rubric.  You can post to all the forums if you want, however, you can only earn a maximum of 20 points for your overall participation.Obviously, we expect our discussion boards to be free from profanity, slurs, or hate speech  – all trolls (and most rude people) will be permanently blocked.
  1. Why are fewer and fewer men enrolling in college? (First half -17 minutes)https://wamu.org/story/24/08/27/why-are-fewer-and-fewer-men-enrolling-in-college
  2. Most community college students plan to get 4-year degrees. Few actually do (4 minutes)https://www.npr.org/2024/08/21/nx-s1-4930527/community-college-affordable-bachelors-degree
  3. The diversity within MIT’s enrollment has plummeted (4 minutes)https://www.npr.org/2024/08/22/nx-s1-5086410/the-diversity-within-mits-enrollment-has-plummeted
  4. The Experiences of Black Women in Higher Education (3 minutes)https://academicminute.org/2024/08/ebony-aya-macalester-college-the-experiences-of-black-women-in-higher-education/
• Response to Podcast 1 – Why are fewer men enrolling in college… Forum
• Response to Podcast 2- Most community college students plan… Forum
• Response to Podcast 3 – The diversity within MIT’s enrollment… Forum
• Response to Podcast 4 – Experiences of Black Women… Forum

I really enjoy writing discussion prompts. Although I did consult co-pilot and Gemini on how to phrase the prompts, I ended up using my own intuition as guidance on these conversation starters. Now, I’m not saying I’m good at writing discussion prompts, because I don’t have any concrete engagement data on my prompts versus other people’s. But I have taken a few classes and attended several webinars, the links to some of which I will share with you below:

• https://academy.eduflow.com/courses/4217e007-9be7-4cb7-ad72-7bf579c0e7a7
• https://spscoursedesign.commons.gc.cuny.edu/designing-discussions/
• https://teaching.resources.osu.edu/examples/effective-online-discussion
• https://topr.online.ucf.edu/discussion-prompts/